Literary Journalism: a definition

I suppose one could say that every news article tells a story. Traditional reporting is straight forward. Articles answer the who's, whats and whens in a matter of fact way. Literary journalism, however, is a thing of beauty. Written like a novel, these articles draw the reader into the scene, introduce the characters and tell the story as it happened. The writers use creative, fictional writing techniques but include only real factual information.

Impact

Tomorrow morning my grandmother will be taken off of the respirator that has been helping her breathe for the past week. Last Tuesday she had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich. for emergency surgery. She was given a pace maker that has been keeping her heart rate stable. To make sure she still had good brain function her doctors performed a CAT scan and discovered that sometime in the past four month my grandma also suffered a stroke.

My family has made the difficult decision to stop artificially prolonging her life. Tomorrow morning when the respirator is shut off she may live just a few moments or possibly a few hours. Chances are she wont make it through the day. So I’d like to thank her for the impact she has had on my life.

My grandmother and I share the same awkward gap in our teeth. We both love travelling and learning about the world. We appreciate listening to talk radio, adore the Detroit Tigers and have such compassion for the less fortunate that it steers us left politically.

Tonight, perhaps my grandmother’s last, I will tell her all of the things that you’ve just read. I’ll tell her how much I love her and how much she means to me. Life is a precious thing that slips away before we realize. So tonight while I speak to my grandmother for the last time, I hope you’ll reach out to your loved ones too and let them know what difference they’ve made in your life.

Creative writing prompt

It was the one thing he coveted most, but six-year-old David Brewer didn't cry when he placed his oversized, plush Tyrannosaurus Rex into the Dumpster in his family's driveway. The charred, stuffed dinosaur sat atop piles of what was once the Brewer family's keepsakes. David hid his face in his mother's side as she stood sullen and weak from the evening's terror.

A fire had ravaged the Brewer home, leaving nothing but ash and burned memories in its wake. How could something like this happen? The Fire Marshal shook his head when he saw what had started the fire. He pointed to a broken bottle in the still burning soot and said, "arson."

The Brewer family is the latest victim of a string of arson fires that has left nearly 50 people in Philadelphia homeless since early December.

The police have no suspects because the targets of the fires appear to be random, said Philadelphia Chief of Police Chuck Branson.