Karen Arenson

We had a guest speaker in my writing interventions class today. I'm sure I would have met the announcement of any change in the pace of our weekly lectures with pleasure, but I was especially excited about hearing Karen Arenson speak. Karen retired from The New York Times recently, where she covered mostly educational issues. Her career as a journalist was much-lauded, and now that she has retired, she has graced Teachers College with her presence for the last few weeks and my writing class was one of her scheduled stops.

We were all supposed to read four articles (not her own) which she had selected ahead of time and come to class prepared to discuss them. I couldn't wait to hear what she had to say about them, and so instead of my usual slapdash highlighting and distracted skimming, I printed them out and filled the margins with careful notes on the stylistic choices made by the writers. I think I was the only one who printed them and brought them to class, although several of my classmates made comments that convinced me they had at least glanced at the articles.

Although she isn't a terribly flowery writer herself, Karen chose articles filled with vivid description. We talked about hooks that are both elegant and informative and admired one journalist's ability to report on what should have been a straight-forward, lackluster event and turn it into a compelling story. She highlighted weighty words which elegantly conveyed meaning inexperienced writers would have struggled to accomplish with several sentences. Newspapers are all all about efficiency, and so every word is important. This reminded me of poetry, where the same principle applies, except that the two genres are on opposite ends of the literary spectrum in my book. Interesting parallel.

Purloined from a website - we didn't actually get to see Karen in action.

Some of my favorite moments:

-Karen said that the way to get noticed is to write about a mundane topic in an exciting way (which seems obvious, but it's much easier said than done).

-Apparently the editors at the Metro desk used to choose one or two words each month and the journalists would compete to see who could work them into a piece first. Two that she remembered: stygian (related to the river Styx) and tatterdemalion (a ragamuffin). Fun idea!

-One legendary reporter worked his way up to the point to where he didn't have to do much field reporting and spent most of his time at his desk on the phone with newbie reporters who'd go out and do interviews and collect facts for him. Karen remembers hearing him snap things like, "What do you mean you don't know how many steps there are? Go back and count them!" into the phone. Junior reporters, provided they survived the experience, all said that they learned volumes about observation from this guy and became adept at sizing situations quickly and asking the right questions as they prepared to write their own pieces.