Shoe Leather Circa 2013

Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death at a Storm-Ravaged Hospital – the hospital in New Orleans, commonly known as “Baptist,” that bore the brunt of Hurricane Katrina – is being named as one of the year’s best books. The author certainly deserves an A for effort: the Note to the Reader at the back of the book is a tour d’horizon of narrative journalism and what it requires today.

There are interviews to conduct:

As I was not at the hospital to witness the events, sources include more than 500 interviews with hundreds of people: doctors, nurses, staff members, hospital executives, patients, family members, government officials, ethicists, attorneys, researchers, and others.

There are documents to find, sort, read, and appraise:

Because memories often fade and change, source materials dating from the time of the disaster and its immediate aftermath were particularly valuable, including photographs, videotapes, e-mails, notes, diaries, Internet postings, articles, and the transcripts of interviews by other reporters and investigators. The narrative was also informed by weather reports, architectural floor plans, electrical diagrams, and reports prepared by plaintiff and defense experts in the course of civil litigation; and I visited the hospital and other sites depicted in the story.

And at every points, there moral decisions to be made:

This book relates the thoughts, impressions, and opinions of the people in it, perhaps the most fraught aspect of narrative journalism. Attributed thoughts or feelings reflect those that a person shared in an interview, wrote down in notes, a diary, or a manuscript, or, less commonly, expressed to others whom I interviewed. As any book reflects the interwoven interpretations and insights of its author, I have tried to make these distinct and to note in the Notes any possible areas of confusion between what is my perspective and what was the perspective of someone involved in the events.

Narrative journalism isn’t rocket science. It’s more complicated than that.

• 7 December 2013