The Art of Being There

Narrative Nonfiction in an Era of Journalism Under Siege

Welcome to The Art of Being There newsletter, which has a new home here on Substack. I’m a Southern California journalist and author of 17 nonfiction books. My passion is for narrative nonfiction and immersion journalism–writing it, teaching it, and celebrating great storytelling in its many forms.

I love nothing more than immersing for days, weeks, months or even longer in a world to research my books. I spent a year inside the secretive Los Angeles Juvenile Court, meeting the kids, families and overwhelmed lawyers, cops and judges who inhabit this neglected corner of the justice system. I was writer-in-residence in one of California’s top neonatal intensive care units, a place of wonder, grief and daily miracles. I  went back to high school to see how one of California’s worst public schools became the state’s best. And for “Mississippi Mud,” I teamed up with the daughter determined to solve the murders of her prominent parents in a corrupt Southern town. 

Burrowing deep to uncover the humanity behind the headlines is The Art of Being There. I’m happiest when I’m the fly on the wall in the most fascinating places and moments. But when I need to be, I can be the fly in the ointment, too. Thank you for joining me.

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Journalism in a Time Like No Other

As Trump and his regime gut our freedoms, government, democracy and decency, I've been trying to figure out how to adapt my teaching to meet the moment for aspiring journalists in my narrative nonfiction class. 

Lesson plans and writing exercises on foreshadowing and character development suddenly seem a pretty fragile bulwark in the face of unfolding threats to journalism and its practitioners. Just this week the AP has been banned by the White House simply for how it refers to a geographic location – the Gulf of Mexico. The job of journalist has not been this perilous for generations, nor less appreciated. A big part of me just wants to warn my students away.

And yet…. I keep coming back to two core beliefs. First: that journalism is a vital calling and part of democracy’s critical safety net–a sacred mission I’ve embraced since my  freshman year at Hampshire College. Second: narrative storytelling is vital to the continued viability of journalism as a business and an institution, especially in this era of the First Amendment under siege.

So I began this semester with a class discussion of how narrative journalism has a unique power to connect with audiences by showing instead of telling. Through the age-old allure of story, place, character, suspense and empathy, narrative storytelling does something no other journalistic form can do quite so well: it reaches both heads and hearts. In the face of devastating wildfires in this part of the world, and the rising tide of misinformation in every part of the world, we need that brand of storytelling now more than ever. 

I shared a few examples of this, beginning with a narrative on what was lost in the Malibu Fires by Los Angeles Times writer Jim Rainey:

As I drove up Pacific Coast Highway, the postcard places of my childhood rushed by.

The Malibu Feed Bin—the country store where our family sold wildflower honey made from the dozens of beehives we tended in our backyard.

The Reel Inn—where we sat at picnic tables and gobbled down cut-rate seafood, and where my dad once asked a guy in line about an acting job.

Something’s Fishy—the sushi place of yesteryear where my brother worked as a busboy and where sake warmed the soul after a day in the cold Pacific.

All gone now, reduced to ash, like so many other landmarks of my youth.

The Times’ coverage of the LA fires has been superb. Rainey’s narrative stands out for his ability to connect with readers in and out of the fire zone. He took us on a bittersweet road trip through time and space to the rough-and-tumble Malibu where he grew up, its last traces burned away along with the beachside mansions of new Malibu. They exist now only in his memory, and those who read his spare, lyrical prose.

Good narratives are always journeys. Sometimes they take readers inside a place. Other times the journey is into the life of a character, as with this Washington Post story about Ava Olsen, a South Carolina girl who stopped going to school after surviving a school shooting.

When Ava was in first grade, she walked out onto the playground behind Townville Elementary as an angry 14-year-old pulled up in a truck, raised a handgun and opened fire. Ava escaped, but a classmate she loved, Jacob Hall, was shot. The only boy she’d ever kissed died three days later. He was 6.

Those six words, “the only boy she’d ever kissed,” haunt and transport us as no screaming headline can. I watched the women and men in my classroom as one of them read this passage aloud. The impact just at that point was written on their expressions, as if the words had exerted tangible physical force on the young writers in the room–which is exactly what they did. Post writer John Woodrow Cox shows rather than tells why we all have a stake in sparing other children from Ava’s and Jacob’s fate, that telling detail in a story of sorrow and healing.

Then we talked about how they, too, could learn to craft such narrative stories and, I assured them there’s no mystery to it. It boils down to the art of being there–for writer and reader both. The method they had learned to rely on in their journalism classes to date—interviewing and quoting people about things already done, sometimes speaking by phone or Zoom rather than in person–will not be sufficient for this class, I explain. You have to be there as a journalist, with your characters, as they are in their element, doing stuff. Only then can you find the empathy to write movingly of a subject, be it the devastation of wildfires or a young girl finding the strength to overcome loss and fear and return to school where her best friend was lost. 

One of the narrative journalists I admire most, author and New York Times reporter Eli Saslow, talks about this process in an interview with Nieman Storyboard:

This kind of reporting, where you’re spending a lot of time with people, it’s… the coolest thing about what we get to do. But it’s also the most sensitive: People are trusting you with the details of their lives… When people give us their trust to go so far in, we’re responsible to the reader first and foremost but also to the people we’re writing about, to treat them with respect and dignity.

Investing that level of time, care and empathy in order to be there as a narrative unfolds, leads to a story that brings readers into a shared experience, as they were there, too.   That’s the power and mystery of story: We are hardwired for them. Our brains react to well-crafted narratives as if we were actually experiencing what’s being depicted, which is why stories –or a mere six words–can shock, delight, madden or leave us in tears. The telling detail, the haunting image, the poignant scene are how stories help us understand the world, and feel empathy and connection to the people we meet on those pages or screens. Narrative journalism doesn’t just inform—it makes us feel something, too. Sometimes, it moves us to do something.

I think it’s the journalism this moment demands. It’s not the only kind we need, of course. But we’ve got to have it, storytelling that offers a roadmap for navigating the divisions in our society and helping readers find our common humanity. 

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The Art of Being There has long been a theme for my work–newspapers, magazines, books. And it’s been the foundation of my journalism teaching and workshops as well. 

That translates into three basic rules for starters. It’s right at the top of my syllabus:

Butts out of chairs. Spend meaningful time with the places and people you’re writing about so you can connect yourself, and by extension, your readers. Go see things happen, smell and hear and feel your settings. Learn their history, their rhythms. Find those telling details, those signature moments. Be there, then bring your readers there.

Find your Ava. Don’t just pick a topic, pick a character. That’s what the Washington Post writer did with school shootings. If you want to write about a universal truth, focus on one compelling example—a single child, not an entire school.

Don’t give away the ending at the beginning. Sounds like commonsense, but it has proven surprisingly hard for many journalism students. They’ve been schooled in classic news writing, which by design is one big spoiler, with all the important stuff revealed at the top. Successful narratives tend to only foreshadow and hint at the outcome–they don’t spill the beans until the end. The point of narrative journalism is for it to feel like a novel, like something you’d read strictly for enjoyment, even as it reveals something both factual and essential about the world.

For myself, there’s an unspoken fourth rule: Listen to my students. I learn so much from them every semester. Teaching is a whole other iteration of the Art of Being There.

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A Narrative that Makes No Sense:

The Midair Collision at the Capitol

Two weeks have passed and investigators and journalists are still trying to piece together a sensible narrative to explain the inexplicable: the fatal midair collision between a military helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet on final approach to Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 29. 

There is one critical question yet to be answered definitively: Why was a military training flight—with night vision goggles known to be accident-prone— taking place anywhere near the flight path of passenger planes?

The 67 deaths resulted during what has been described as a night training flight on the edge of a major civilian airport in the heart of the nation’s capitol— some of the most rigidly controlled airspace on earth. That mix of problem-plagued night vision technology and crowded airspace is a recipe for disaster. We’ve known that for decades. I should know – I wrote the first stories about it in the 1980s for the Orange County Register in a series entitled “Death in the Dark.” The first installment was an investigative narrative that began:

Blindness took them without warning. 

One moment, moonlit hilltops rolled by 200 feet below. The next, clouds enveloped their military helicopter in a dark fist, blotting out moon, stars, horizon, sight. Cockpit windows became black mirrors, revealing nothing.

Pilot and crew knew they had moments to react, to turn or climb from their blind path. Straining to see, they peered through the artificial eyes of night-vision goggles, devices that amplify evening's meager light hundreds of times.

Under ideal conditions, such goggles make moonlight gleam with dazzling brightness, painting a glowing green picture of the night-dark landscape below. But conditions were far from ideal this night. The clouds were thick, the moon obscured. And the men learned that the mechanical eyes they relied on were not so reliable after all.

The mountain was visible only a few seconds before the crash, a shadowy mass, black as a coffin lid, rising in front of them. Their helicopter was swatted to earth with crushing force as the pilot tried, too late, to veer away. And then, finally, there was light–the fiery brightness of burning wreckage that drew other helicopters to the scene like moths to a candle.

Twenty-nine marines died in that training crash in South Korea. I found more than 60 more crashes like it, leading to 120 deaths as top military pilots flew into power lines, hills and other aircraft while using night vision goggles, though the Pentagon blamed one after another on pilot error by some of the most skilled fliers in the world. In reality, though these devices help illuminate dark landscapes, they also impair pilot’s depth perception and peripheral vision, disorient aircrews and cause them to fly off course, and can blind pilots to impending collisions, especially when other objects or aircraft are in shadow. 

My stories led to a congressional investigation, a Pulitzer Prize, and flight safety restrictions that should have prevented this latest midair collision. Why didn’t they? And why would military helicopters on any kind of training flight, with or without goggles, be allowed anywhere near that congested civilian airspace? Given all we know about the hazards of flying with night vision goggles, it simply makes no sense. 

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‘Total Garbage’ in Paperback

As if things aren’t terrifying enough, University of New Mexico scientists have just announced that entire spoonfuls of microplastic waste are turning up in people’s brains. Testing of dementia patients shows that they have up to three times as much plastic in the brain as the average person.

In my latest book, Total Garbage: How to Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World, I write about the fact that Americans consume the equivalent of a plastic credit card a week and it’s getting worse. 

Total Garbage is out this month in an updated paperback edition. It’s my fourth environmental narrative book and introduces a cast of characters you’ll love meeting: ordinary people right in our neighborhoods tackling waste and the environmental catastrophes it drives. You can read a Total Garbage excerpt in the Saturday Evening Post about how Ryan Metzger turned a father-and-son weekend recycling project into Ridwell, a powerhouse social impact company. Or listen to the conversation I had with

Andy @Revkin

and another waste warrior featured in Total Garbage, Maine’s Sarah Nichols, on Andy’s

Sustain What

show.

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Coming Events

March 15-16: Tucson Festival of Books. There are few places more magical than Tucson in spring. Please join me at Arizona’s signature literary meetup at the University of Arizona. I’ll be talking about sustainability and climate with authors Rosanna Xia, Vince Beiser and Neil Shubin.  

June 10: California Club Literary Series: I’ll be discussing Total Garbage in Los Angeles.

Sept. 25: University of Michigan. I’ll be visiting the University of Michigan for a series of sustainability events and classes. Details coming soon. 

I have more college and community events in the works. Look for updates in my next newsletter or at edwardhumes.com. I also have a limited number of slots for Zoom meet-ups with book clubs and civic groups in March and April leading up to Earth Day. (Reach out to author@edwardhumes.com)

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Reading List

This month I’ve been inspired by the narrative nonfiction of my colleague and friend Kim Christensen, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner.  His groundbreaking reporting on decades of child sexual abuse and coverup in the Boy Scouts of America is now out in expanded form as a book, On My Honor: The Secret History of the Boy Scouts of America. Kim passed away before his book was published but his powerful words live on. His work not only helped expose scandal on an epic scale, it has empowered reforms and a measure of justice for generations of victims. 

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Thank You For Being Here

Thank you for taking the time out of your busy life to read The Art of Being There. For now this newsletter is free. Please feel free to share it and the subscription link with anyone you think might be interested. And, as always, please drop me a line with questions, suggestions and tell me what you’re reading, too. 

Warm wishes,

Edward Humes