News to Me: Finding and Writing Colorful Feature Stories

Journalists! Stop Reading Press Releases! Get Out of the Office! Creativity. Imagination. There's no place for these things in just-the-facts journalism. Really? Who says? In "News to Me: Finding and Writing Colorful Feature Stories," Barry Newman offers 29 new essays, interleaved with a broad range of his fully reprinted articles, to explain how he gets his ideas, his material, and turns it all into engrossing, funny--and publishable-stories. "News to Me" is meant for journalists, journalism teachers, journalism students and aspiring journalists, as well as for general readers who want to know how the sausage is made. "I've never been an editor or a bureau chief, or a teacher or a critic," Newman says. "I'm a machine operator. I bang keysto make words. Here, I'm an exhibit."

PROF. ARI L. GOLDMAN (Columbia University Graduate School Of Journalism) "How do you come up with story ideas that readers will love and editors will buy? That is one of the hardest things to teach young journalists. But when you hand them a copy of 'News to Me' by Barry Newman they learn that there are stories in seltzer bottles and in police sirens and in the corner post office and even in the humble banana.  I've used 'News to Me' to teach my students about good journalism and vivid writing. It's fun--and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than a real textbook! Enjoy!"

MARK KRAMER (Professor of Practice in Narrative Journalism, Boston University) " 'News to Me' is a delightfully written self-analysis of the intimate journalism techniques developed by a pathfinding reporter, one of the early innovators of narrative journalism in his front-page Wall Street Journal columns. I use the book as teaching companion to my own widely assigned text on narrative writing, 'Telling True Stories,' (edited with Wendy Call). 'News to Me' is not only sage and practical, it's also funny. The young writers in my seminars love it."  
TONY HORWITZ (Pulitzer Prize winning former Wall Street Journal reporter whose books include Confederates in the Attic and Baghdad Without A Map)"Barry Newman is better at 'getting the color' than any journalist I know. Now, in this album of his quirkiest hits--on pickled herring, foreskin restoration, guillotining bagels, and other scoops from around the globe--he gives us tips and color commentary on the craft he's honed over 40 years. Read, laugh, and learn from an unmatched pro."

VAUHINI VARA (The New Yorker)
" Barry Newman is known as a legend among reporters at the Wall Street Journal and well beyond--one of the finest, and funniest, writers in mod- ern American journalism. "News to Me" not only collects some of his most delightful stories but also offers rare and important insights into how he discovered, reported, and wrote them. It takes a lot of hard work to make storytelling look as effortless as Newman does."
 
MATT MURRAY (Deputy Editor in Chief, The Wall Street Journal)
"Newman is a nonpareil, the master of micro-detail who can make any subject compelling, from the noble to the nitpicky. He is the writer whose stories we gobbled up first, the one we all aspired to be. Thank goodness he has decided to spill some of his secrets. "
 
CONOR DOUGHERTY (Reporter, The New York Times)
"There are generations of people, like me, whose idea of what a story could be - or even what journalism could be--was redefined by Barry's work."(As told to Jim Romenesko.)
 
MIKE WILLIAMS (Reuters Global Enterprise Editor)
" Barry Newman, the best feature writer the Wall Street Journal ever had, has produced a book on writing. It isn't for everyone--just for journalists who, like him, insist on being unique. If you follow his advice, you will, like him, be a pain in the ass to your editors. That's their problem. Given how perishable routine stories are in the digital age, uniqueness is now more important for journalists than ever. "
 
BILL GRUESKIN (Professor, Columbia Journalism School; Exec- utive Editor/Training, Bloomberg News)
"Barry Newman started off covering metals and mining for the Wall Street Journal, and thank heavens, he didn't last long on that beat. Instead, he headed off to write brilliantly composed and deeply reported features, on everything from the greasepots of Chinatown's restaurants in New York to the 3,488-mile fence that keeps out dingoes in Australia. Now he reveals how he comes up with and executes such brilliant ideas, to the great benefit of journalists, those who love them and those who want to be them."

ALEX MARTIN (Page-One Editor, The Wall Street Journal)
"Barry Newman makes newspaper stories joyously offbeat events. And he makes them from so many different things: fish, Grape-Nuts, bicycles and lamps, just shelves and shelves of lamps. All the while, he has made it plain to editors that he knew just what he was doing, thank you very much. The stories, and now this revealing book, prove he indeed does."
 
DOUGLAS A. BLACKMON (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Slavery by Another Name and former Wall Street Journal bureau chief)
" Barry Newman is some kind of pen-in-hand superhero--endowed with a power unlike any other journalist to survive the apocalypse that wiped out almost everything that was ever enchanting in American newspapers. He has not only endured the editors, hacks, billionaires and web design- ers who spoiled the art of publishing newspapers, he is still writing, still charming every reader, and in "News to Me" showing everyone who cares about words the quiet magic that makes them sing."
 
KEN WELLS (former Wall Street Journal Page One Editor, editor of Floating Off the Page and Herd on the Street)
"The first time I read a Barry Newman story on Page One of the Wall Street Journal, I was so jealous of its wit, clarity, vision and pace that I wanted to punch the guy. Who tells stories like that in under 1,500 words? Nobody. He's the master. "