By Sebastian Łupak
Reporter, Gazeta Wyborcza Trojmiasto
Gdansk, Poland
Hosted by the Saint Paul Pioneer Press

Every time I tried to file a story at the St. Paul Pioneer Press a disturbing sign would come up on my screen. These were just five innocent-looking words, and yet each time I saw them they made me sweat, tremble, doubt my sanity and just about never want to file a story again. These words were:

“HAVE... YOU... CHECKED... THE... FACTS?”

Well, at least four of them were innocent looking, but the last one — FACTS — was the source of all my discomfort. There was the spelling of names to consider, places, official titles, ages, dates and all these minute details that can make your life hell. It made me think of those bleak and dreary University of Maryland days, when Chris Callahan with a smirk and an evil look on his face, made us all write stories about dead people in the town of Bethesda. We were all paranoid, thinking that every single fact we got was wrong: surely the deceased was not a man, but a woman, 25 and not 52 years old, and did not die in a car crash, but of a heart attack last night when she saw the obituary of her late husband written by a Friendly Fellow.

This is not to say that what I have learned here is to check the facts. I am not suggesting that Polish press still continues to make up facts to fit the propaganda, or that our newsrooms are manned by people who did not understand what all that fuss about Jayson Blair was all about, since they do the same every day.

What I have learned is that sometimes a simple gimmick — like a sign on a screen every time you file a story — is enough to keep you on your toes. Having an Accuracy Watch corner on Page 2, where you come clean about all the mistakes, is also a thing to admire. Why pretend that we are infallible like the Central Committee?

Obviously, there were more things to keep me paranoid in St. Paul than just the screen sign. For a long time I had the impression that there was somebody behind my back: watching me, spying, and plotting? Who were all these people wandering freely about the paper, all these new faces, whispering behind my ears? Well, it turned out that the Pioneer Press had a policy of inviting community activists to witness the news production process, to sit in editorial meetings and critiques, to listen, talk and share their opinions. This, I think, is a wonderful way of getting the community involved with the paper. Just last week we had representatives from Citizens for Safer Minnesota, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce and Jewish Community Relations Council. Concentrating even more on civic journalism, to provoke active citizenship and raise the level of public debate is something I would like to encourage back home.

And speaking of readers, we writers often forget that we are here for them. I mean our jobs, money, free passes to concerts, our faces on those colorful digital billboards downtown and finally Pulitzer Prizes are all important, but really we are here to please the readers, and obviously they are harder to please than our boyfriends/girlfriends. Therefore the Pioneer Press Reader’s Advocate, whose mission is to talk to readers, hear their opinions, explain, refer them to individual writers and then share the results of these discussions with the newsroom. It not only fosters the paper-readership relationship, but also encourages discussion within the paper on issues raised by readers.

Giving the writer’s e-mail address and telephone number right beneath the story is a great way to encourage readers to contact them and foster further investigations. This is a simple enough technique that I will try to encourage at home. Unfortunately, I cannot take Northwestern University’s Readership Institute back home with me but I can attempt to tell folks in Poland about its reports, including “How To Improve Obituary Coverage” and “Obituary Coverage: A Gallery of Best Practices.”

And speaking of things I wish I could take back home I have to mention the federal Freedom of Information Act, Minnesota Government Data Practices Act and Open Meeting Act, which would make my job so much easier and our political system so much more transparent.

I would also encourage my paper to start holding training sessions, which seem to be an almost everyday reality at the Pioneer Press. I love the way the editor sets “goals” every week and then gives “golds” to those who perform best. A little more competition at home should bring out the best in us, without turning us into racing rats.

Staying in style, understandably, is also a huge part of being a reporter. I am not talking here of smart clothing. That goes without saying. We all like to shop for elegant clothing to sport later at press conferences. But to be able to ask The Style Man a question about English usage on the Knight Ridder web page is exciting, since English seems to be baffling even to native speakers. We must have our Style Man or Woman at Gazeta Wyborcza. We could use some proper Polish all right.

After going back home, I will have to give up one of my rights. Many a time at my home paper I was asked to write an opinion piece, while being a reporter. I have enjoyed this tremendously, having finally had a chance to speak out my mind and say what I think of all these “scoundrels” running the city council. Now, grudgingly, I will deny myself this privilege, understanding that it is not a practice that renders me particularly objective in the eyes of my readers and interviewers.

I will also suggest new and different sections for the paper. Food is big in America; why not make it big in Poland? Sports are astronomical! Maybe someone would like to be a consumer columnist? Let’s give people the opportunity to talk about their weddings. Style looks nice in the paper—we should have more of it! Who wants to ask a weatherman a question (e.g. “Why does it have to be so damn cold?!”)? Let’s expand obituaries and remember our deceased. We could even discuss generally despised but secretly enjoyed television, even on a local level. And please let’s not forget the fishing page. It is such good reader bait, and a catch may be as big as a grouper!

The easiest way for me to implement all these changes would be to be promoted and then force them from top down, as all great editors and dictators do. However, in absence of such a possibility, I intend to do a number of presentations, showing how and why it works in the U.S., and how it can be beneficial and fun for my paper. I would like to invite the editors and readers to try and come up with the Master Narrative for my paper. What is the on-going story that shapes our lives and who we are? What is Gdansk defined by? Is it the history, the transformation to the free market economy? Is it the Baltic Sea? Let’s find out and use it in deciding what to cover.

Of course, after coming back from the U.S., all eyes will be on me. Not only will I be treated as a star by my coworkers, who will come and ask for an autograph (I wish!) but also the readers will scan my stories for the sign of my Americanization. “Has he benefited,” they will ask, or “did he go to Poynter to get this Florida suntan? Is his writing more exciting now, or dulled by too many posh lunches that made him lazy and fat? Has he become complacent or does he have the pioneer energy in him to go and conquer?”

Naturally then, my concentrating on my own writing will be as big an issue as suggesting general changes for the paper. But then, writing is simple, isn’t it? You just sit down at the typewriter and... open a vein. But I faint when I a see a needle at the doctor’s! I hate pain!

Another theory is that writing, at least a novel, or working on a big newspaper project, is like walking from Moscow to Vladivostok on your knees. I do not know which one is worse. But I guess the recurring topic is that writing is not sunbathing by the pool in Florida. It is a serious challenge. So it will continue to hurt, and maybe even more so now that I am so aware of the possibilities.

What I have learned here, starting with Chris Callahan at Maryland was to scale down my grandiose vision of a story reaching 100 or better still 200 inches. I’ve always wanted to be Leo Tolstoy of journalism; Marcel Proust would do, too. Here, I began with a haiku, with a sentence per paragraph, and learned to pay attention to single words. I learnt to be precise, concise and to the point.

Another skill I acquired was trying narrative techniques to enrich my daily news stories. I like the way stories are told in the Pioneer Press as if to the neighbor, in a conversational style. There seems to be more touching, smelling, tasting and hearing in American reporting, too. There are scenes, details, settings, dialogues and characters. In Poland focus seems to be on pure information. I want my stories to smell!

Of course, I have to mention Poynter Institute’s Roy Peter Clark’s tool-box here. I was a fan of toolboxes as a child, with a hammer being my favorite, and then as I grew — to the surprise of my father and me — I turned out to be, ugh, a “humanist,” who actually enjoyed writing more than he did fixing the car’s engine. But the love of toolboxes is still in me. So how could I possibly not take advantage of Clark’s toolbox? I will pick a new tool, try to apply it to my story, see if it works, and if it doesn’t and the story looks like a Frankenstein, then I will apply a hammer to it, before it devours its creator.

There are two ways of thinking about writing. One is that it is a job like any other. You get up in the morning, take a shower, dress and later with someone who claims to have right connections you go out to the Iraqi guerilla camp in the desert, interview the Kalashnikov-carrying fighters, go back to the bullet-torn hotel, write a story, send it by email and enjoy your evening cup of coffee. Big deal! Others claim that journalism is more of an art, sharing the symbolic and the poetic with other Muses. Well, is it work or is it art? Best if it is a work of art. And I wish I could turn my stories into precisely this.

If I succeed, how will I celebrate? The party I will throw will be so loud, it will be impossible for you to miss it.