In the ninth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, Jackson Free Press editor Donna Ladd discusses her award-winning feature on the Seale family, which has long ties to the Ku Klux Klan, but has tried to ameliorate its past. She talks to St. John Barned-Smith about how they found the story, how her upbringing in Mississippi informs her work, and how she connects with her sources. "I find the best way is to just have absolute interest in what they're saying," Ladd says. "I have no judgment when I'm sitting in front of someone. I am a sponge.
In the eighth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, the Dallas Observer's Megan Feldman talks to St. John Barned-Smith about her award-winning feature on Central American migrants who make often-deadly 1,500-mile trips on freight trains to make it to the Mexican-American border. Feldman went to Mexico to immerse herself in the experience of these immigrants, and also was able to tell the story through one person who had made the journey and ended up in the Dallas area. She says the most challenging aspect of reporting the story was finding that source: "In Dallas, there's a particularly harsh backlash against immigrants, and on the other side of that, there's a very high level of fear among the immigrants, so it took a long time to find someone who'd be willing to tell their story."
In the seventh installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, Santa Fe Reporter columnist Zane Fischer discusses his award-winning column, Zane's World, with Elena Brown. Fischer, who came to the alt-weekly world from the nonprofit sector, talks about the steep learning curve he faced starting out as a SFR columnist, how he comes up with ideas, and what he wishes more columnists would do. "Invoke a dialogue," he says. "One component of a column should be the continuous dialogue with the readers. It's all part of the process of building community."
In the sixth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, OC Weekly staffer and ¡Ask a Mexican! columnist Gustavo Arellano discusses his column, which for the second time in three years won a first-place AltWeekly Award. He also talks to Elena Brown about getting hate mail, the immigration debate, and what he likes about writing for alt-weeklies. "At a daily newspaper, they ask you to do one thing and one thing only. I'd get so bored so fast I'd quit my job," Arellano says. "Here, I could write about anything, so long as it's good. That freedom is so intoxicating I can't see why anybody would not want a job like mine."
In the fifth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, the Nashville Scene writers Tracy Moore and Matt Sullivan talk about their work on Nashville Cream, which garnered a first-place win in the blog category. In a city so strongly associated with country music, they chose to go a different way with the Scene's music blog, which has helped it stand out. "There's a misconception that Tennessee only covers country and honky tonk," Moore says, "So when I took over [the site], I really made the rock scene my thing."
In the fourth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, Arkansas Times associate editor David Koon talks to Corina Knoll about his feature profile of writer Mohja Kahf, a novelist, poet and sex columnist working to change public perception of Muslim women. Koon talks about finding the story, trying to paint a true picture of a sympathetic source, and how his creative writing background informs his work. "A lot of the things I know -- how to create character, how to create mood and theme -- translate straight across to features," he says. "I think a lot of people who gravitate toward alternative journalism and do it well come from a creative-writing background."
In the third installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, Malcolm Gay, a regular freelancer for Riverfront Times, talks to Corina Knoll about his feature profile of author Qiu Xiaolong. Gay, who was formerly a Village Voice Media fellow at the East Bay Express and staff writer at the RFT, says he learned how challenging it is to write about a writer. "What they do physically and in terms of their day-to-day existence is very uneventful. So it's hard to bring drama and animation to those scenes," he says. "That's the challenge: to access that inner world and make it evident in the story."
In the second installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, the Independent Weekly's Adam Sobsey talks to Rich Knight about how he got his start as a book reviewer, his playwriting career, and the differences between his work for daily newspapers and alt-weeklies. "I often have more space in the Indy than I do when I write theater reviews for The News & Observer," Sobsey says, "so there's an opportunity for me to say more about what I'm reviewing, either specifically or more broadly."
After a two-year hiatus, the "How I Got That Story" series today returns to AAN.org to help shed light on the processes employed by first-place AltWeekly Award winners. This year, 19 winners were interviewed by Academy for Alternative Journalism fellows, and each week, two new interviews will be published on AAN.org. These interviews will also appear in the book Best AltWeekly Writing and Design 2008, which will be available soon. To read the first installment of the series, Rich Knight's interview with Washington City Paper art critic Jeffry Cudlin, click here.
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