Interview with Dan Barry

Dan Barry has long been one of our favorite journalists. He writes the column This Land for The New York Times. His work delves into the corners of America, examining the stories that move us apart and bring us together. He is the recipient of numerous awards for journalistic excellence, as well as the author of Pull Me Up: A Memoir, and City Lights: Stories About New York. Recently he took time from his busy schedule to answer our questions. We thank him for this.

Dark Sky Magazine: You’ve been writing This Land since 2007. How has the experience treated you?

Dan Barry: The flip answer would be that I have enough small bottles of motel shampoo to lather the borough of Brooklyn. But the truth is that the job, while taxing at times, has been a dream. Any complaints about eating too often at Subways, or waiting on the tarmacs of America, are more than offset by the privilege of wandering around this country, exploring, nosing around, trying to figure it all out. Entirely paid for, by the way, by The New York Times. In journalism, it really doesn’t get much better than this.

So, in short, the experience has treated me quite well, thank you.

DSM: I enjoy your column because it seems a throwback to a bygone era. Journalism today requires less travel, less face-to-face contact. How does really sinking your boots into a place inform your writing?

Kalaupapa Lighthouse

DB: Any journalist will tell you that an interview is vastly improved when done face-to-face, rather than on the telephone or through email exchanges. Not only for descriptive purposes, but for the trust that is easier to establish when a subject can look at you and see that you are not Beelzebub (though when they get a look at me, they might in fact prefer Beelzebub). Beyond that obvious point, I often find that a place is as much a character in the story as a person; sometimes, in fact, the place is the protagonist. The invasive weed called cogongrass IS the character in a column I wrote from Alabama. Lake Mead IS the character in a piece I did from Nevada. And Kalaupapa, the Hawaiian place where people with Hansen’s disease – leprosy – is the spectacularly beautiful and hauntingly sorrowful character in a column I wrote from Molokai. In fact, in Kalaupapa, the wind rustling through trees provided the voice one would need to hear to write about it.

There are ways to capture a place with words without actually going there. I’ve done this many times, on deadline, through detailed questions posed to people who are on the ground. Robert McFadden, the legendary rewrite man at the Times, is the acknowledged genius at this.

Still, you want to be there.

DSM: Your writing has a spiritual quality. It’s almost like you are saying thank you — to the people you’ve spoken to — with your narrative. Is that accurate?

DB: I don’t know if I am saying thank you to the people I interview and write about. Surely some of them have not wanted to thank me after my words about them have appeared in print.

I do, though, recognize that reporters do not have subpoena power. When people agree to talk to me, they are giving me the gifts of their stories and their time. I also strive to be fair to them; to be careful in my short-hand descriptions of them; to recognize that we all have frailties. Most of all, I try to tell their stories with an understanding of the human condition that allows others to find some identification, some connection, with the subject, no matter how far they might be, geographically or psychically.

DSM: The people and places you cover reflect the diversity of the American landscape. Have you seen significant changes in that landscape, the people, since your column began?

DB: I can’t say that I have seen a change in the American landscape as defined by its people. I’ve only been writing the column for three years – a finger snap for any sociologist studying behavior or attitudes of a culture.

The change, though, may be in the physical landscape, which then begins, gradually, to change people. Every place looks more and more like every place else. When I traveled with the Times photographer Angel Franco for this column, we would drive through some commercial mess in, say, Kansas City, and ask each other: What does this remind you of? The answer: Laurel, Maryland; Seattle, Washington; St. Louis, Illinois. The same box stores, the same franchise restaurants, the same chain motels.

Breakfast at Perkins; lunch at Subway; a coffee at Starbucks; dinner at Outback; sleep in a Holiday Inn Express. You could be anywhere.

DSM: Do recurring lessons stand out to you, like American proverbs?

DB: Off the top of my head:

- Never assume.

- Hampton Inns have free Internet service.

- Do more listening than talking.

- Watch the speed limit, as it may vary.

- Pack bottles of water for long trips.

- Everyone has a story.

DSM: What do you look for when determining a potential story?

DB: Ideally, I want a story that has a strong protagonist, whether a person or a place. A seemingly mundane situation that, when more closely described, becomes extraordinary. And some kind of conclusion that I can develop as a surprise, or a reward, or a reflection of something larger and more universal than the situation being described.

A year ago, for example, I wrote about investigators and citizens working together to identify the victim of a decade-old murder. Pieces of his skeletal remains had been kept in a box in a state office, and he was known as Juan Doe. I arranged the piece so that the last two words of the column were the man’s name — Miguel Garcia – as though this property of his had finally been returned to him.

DSM: This Land uses multimedia components. Do you always travel with the same team?

DB: For two years I traveled with Franco, the photographer, and we would often do slide shows with some audio. This year I travel on the east coast with Times photographer Nicole Bengiveno, and on the west coast with Times photographer Monica Almeida. Also, more and more, I am working with Times videographer Kassie Bracken. All of these people are wonderful reporters who are constantly teaching me, and they seem to have great patience with me. I think the multimedia approach is exciting and vital.

DSM: Prior to This Land, you wrote a column called About New York, from which the book City Lights was published. Can readers expect a similar collection from This Land?

DB: I don’t know. A collection of columns about a single city is one thing; there is an accepted understanding of place. But a collection of columns about a country like the United States? I don’t know. We’ve thought about it, but I don’t know.

DSM: I live on Vashon Island, outside of Seattle. Recently you wrote a story about the Seattle PI, how they were changing to an online only format. What’s your take on the future of newspaper reporting? Can the print model survive?

DB: I think the print model will survive, but let me quickly add that I don’t know how. I do know that many weekly newspapers and smaller, rural newspapers are doing fine. I also think that there will be a readership base for the Times and other national newspapers. I also believe, whether it is in print or online, daily journalism using words will survive, because this is how we have always communicated with one another: through the telling of stories.

DSM: A column of This Land’s ambition and scope seems like a fitting example of what might be lost to smaller, provincial media outlets. Why is it important to preserve an intimate national perspective in journalism?

DB: This is a tough question to answer without sounding self-serving, or slipping into some bloviating. And I don’t know whether everyone would agree that it is “important.”

I guess the answer is that we are all one nation: wildly diverse in our cultures and experiences, yet united by our allegiance. The column is just one way to introduce ourselves to one another, to stop in for a 1200-word visit to Bill, Wyoming, or Havana, Illinois, or Leavenworth, Washington – and discover how diverse and yet how similar we are as people living in the United States of America. Maybe stereotypes melt away a little bit, I don’t know. If nothing else, I get to say that on this day, in this year, in this state, this is sort of the way it was in This Place, America.

What larger significance this has, I don’t know. I just know it’s a neat job.

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Dan Barry’s column, “This Land,” takes readers beneath news stories and into obscure and well-known corners of the United States every Monday. The column will expand Dan’s storytelling scope to the nation from New York City, where he wrote the “About New York” column for three years.

(From the New York Times)