This is copied from the Guradian, this week (6/18). A nice piece, I thought.

'Try to see the world through their eyes'


Vin Ray uncovers a previously unpublished piece by captive BBC Gaza
correspondent Alan Johnston that underlines his mastery of the art of
storytelling

Monday June 18, 2007
The Guardian

A few days ago I was searching through old emails for an address I had lost. I
eventually found what I wanted and was just about to move on when something
caught my eye. Parked next to the email I was looking for was an old message
from March last year. I remembered immediately what it was. "God knows, what
I'm about to say isn't anything remotely new," it began modestly and in a tone
typical of the writer. It was from Alan Johnston.
I was establishing the BBC College of Journalism at the time and we had asked
reporters for their thoughts about the craft of radio reporting. We had plenty
of replies, but none as humbling as Alan's thoughts about the role of a
reporter.

He does not attend the "look at me" school of reporting: as much emphasis is
given to listening as telling. He knows that behind all the politics, policy
and diplomacy it is real people and the tiny details that matter and that will
engage us, often in stories we might otherwise ignore. If you haven't
considered it before, you might think that radio reporting is merely a matter
of talking vaguely intelligibly into a microphone. It is not. At its heart, it
is a craft like any other. On the face of it the toolkit is simple: sounds and
words. It takes a while to use them effectively; when you get good at it you
can paint a picture in the listener's mind. But the very best reporters achieve
a kind of alchemy that can stop you in your tracks. A listener in their kitchen
will smell the dust and sense the tension in an crowded alleyway thousands of
miles away.

Of course, there are more reporters toiling away in the dust on our behalf in
remote and often dangerous places. But re-reading Alan's email, I doubt many
will have so thoroughly mastered the art of storytelling. So as you read his
note, allow in to your head the voice of Alan Johnston. And listen to the quiet
words of a master craftsman. Vin Ray


Alan Johnston on the craft of radio reporting

What I'm about to say isn't anything remotely new. Anybody who goes near the new
BBC college of journalism will surely already know all this. But for me, so much
of this job is about how well you work the human element into any given story.

I normally never tell war stories "... when I was in Jalalabad with the mortars
coming down ... blah, blah, blah." But, on this one occasion, there is
something I can remember from Grozny that illustrates the point. I was with a
journalist, not a BBC bloke, who very much liked being in a war zone, and
during the battle for the city, we were in an abandoned block of flats. We went
into an apartment where a shell had come through the living-room wall. And I
remember hearing this guy immediately start talking about whether it had been a
bazooka shell or a rocket-propelled grenade that had done the damage, and where
the soldier who fired it must have been standing on the street outside.

But if you looked around the room for a minute, you could see the life that used
to go on in it. You could see the books that the family used to read, and the
sort of pictures that they liked to hang on the walls, and, from photographs,
you could see that they had three kids and that the oldest girl had graduated
from university. Of course, their story, what had happened to them - what they
were, and what they had lost - was what the war was all about. It did not
really matter whether it was a bazooka or a rocket that had turned their world
upside down.

So much of the job is about trying to find the imagination within yourself to
try to see, to really see, the world through the eyes of the people in the
story. Not just through the eyes of the Palestinian who has just had his home
smashed. But also through the eyes of the three young Israelis in a tank who
smashed it. Why did they see that as a reasonable thing to do? What was going
through their minds as their tank went through the house? If you can come close
to answering questions like that, then you'll be giving the whole picture, which
is what the BBC must do. And when you are with one side from the conflict, you
have got to put to them the very best arguments of the other side - the
toughest questions. But the aim is absolutely not to smother the story with a
search for some sort of formulaic, 50-50-style balance. If the truth is that
the Israelis, or the Palestinians, have simply acted appallingly, then of
course that is exactly what the piece must end up saying.

And that business of putting yourself in the shoes of the people in the story
can only be done if you listen and listen to them. If the people involved are
willing to put up with your endless presence, then the details start to emerge.
And it is often the details that make it work - images, or turns of phrase, or
ways of seeing that become key parts of the way you tell the story. That is
what can bring the thing alive.

How do you structure the piece? I guess that the answer is that once you have
got the whole, powerful, human story, you have got to put yourself in the shoes
of a listener in Lagos, or Lima, or Luton who has not had to know much about
Gaza at all. If you were in his position, how much background would you need?
What would be the easiest way to have the flow of events put before you? That
is surely mostly what the structure is all about.

Finally, as you well know, you have got to try to put the whole thing together
in a way that makes the very most of what radio can do. You've got to try to
put the listener right there in the alleyways with the kids and the donkey
carts - or on Gaza beach with the surf and the wind. The best pieces ride along
on sounds and stand-ups and atmosphere that are always building a sense of place
and setting for the story. And that does mean that you need to have thought
about the structure well in advance. You need to know where your stand-ups are
going to sit - what they follow, and what they will lead into.

But you know all this. There are no secrets left under the sun, least of all in
journalism. And it goes without saying that so very often, for one reason or
another, you do not end up doing half of the above things. There are all kinds
of limitations, and often the piece is not nearly as good as you wanted it to
be. But you always know what you would like to have done, given the time and
the right contributors ... and a bit of luck.