Working Titlez

Our colleagues at CityLife have named the trio of journalists Local Heroes in the December 22, 2011 issue. The comprehensive investigative report Deadly Force is available as an e-book here. All Stephens Press e-books can be viewed here. ~ CHU

BRIAN HAYNES, LAWRENCE MOWER, REVIEW-JOURNAL REPORTERS; ALAN MAIMON, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

The conduct of those we empower to protect us should be a matter of constant concern and vigilance on the part of citizens. But there have been enough officer-involved fatal shootings in Las Vegas, and the seemingly routine clearing of those officers by a controversial coroner’s inquest system, that you couldn’t be blamed for becoming inured to the whole grim spectacle. Which is what made “Deadly Force,” the Review-Journal’s comprehensive examination of police shootings, so important and resonant: It pried our eyes open again. (Disclosure: CityLife is owned by the company that publishes the R-J.) It’s the sort of long-term (the reporters spent a year on it), resource-intensive (the paper spent thousands acquiring records), wide-ranging, public-service journalism that big metro dailies were born to undertake.

“I suppose what surprised me the most,” Lawrence Mower tells CityLife, “was that for years — forever, really — we’ve been hearing that shootings were justifed because the person had a knife, or a gun, or a car. That is likely true in the legal sense. But what we discovered was that just because the shooting was justified didn’t mean that it had to happen in the first place. That some other departments held officers accountable for tactics leading up to a shooting was a huge surprise and allowed us to look at all 378 incidents in a new light.”

While the series certainly has local cops feeling the heat of renewed scrutiny, it’s also prompting an internal dialogue in the department about its policies and behavior, and that can only be good. Kudos, guys. ~SCOTT DICKENSHEETS

The Vegas Valley Book Festival is sponsoring a Flash Fiction contest. Application here. Only the first twenty applicants will be accepted, and you can’t register until July 22. So set your alarms and register early to get one of the coveted spots. Flashers will show up at the appointed time and place, be given a writing prompt, ninety minutes to write a 500-word short story and will write their hearts. Winners will achieve fame and glory! Their story will published in CityLife and an audience to read it to at the Book Festival.

The collaborative novel, now titled Restless City, has chapter two posted here. Written by UNLV professor John Irsfeld (Night Moves, Rats Alley), the story moves forward. A project of the Vegas Valley Book Festival and sponsored by CityLife, the entire book has seven sequential authors. The final chapter will be read at the festival in November. Enjoy and speculate what third author, Brian Rouff, will do next.

Exciting news! From the press release . . .

CityLife partners with

Stephens Press to publish books

Stephens Press, the book publishing division of Stephens Media, has launched a new imprint called CityLife Books.

CityLife Books will publish up to four titles per year in a trade paperback format. The books will be available directly to CityLife newspaper readers and at area bookstores and online retailers.

CityLife Publisher Geoff Schumacher, the imprint’s editor, said he is looking for nonfiction and fiction proposals and manuscripts that speak to regular readers of the alternative weekly newspaper. “This imprint aims to create a new outlet for local writers who have something provocative or important to say about Southern Nevada,” Schumacher says. “We want to publish books that question the conventional wisdom and offer new ways of looking at this region and its people. Great writing will be paramount.”

Schumacher, who has written two books published by Stephens Press and edited several others, says he expects to receive a great many manuscripts. “I will look at them all, but of course we can publish only a tiny fraction of what we receive,” he says. “Quality comes first, but we also will focus on books that we believe a large number of readers will want to buy.”

Stephens Press President Carolyn Hayes Uber says she is excited to help talented writers share their voice and vision. “CityLife readers are outspoken and passionate about popular culture, politics and causes,” Uber says. “CityLife Books, whether fiction or nonfiction, will reflect and embrace this perspective the newspaper has fostered.”

Submissions to CityLife Books should follow the guidelines set forth on the Stephens Press website (www.stephenspress.com).

My colleague Geoff Schumacher recently presented a workshop on journalism for the Las Vegas Writers Conference. Included in his handouts was this essay about writing. I thought it deserved to be shared with other writers and lovers of writing, so I sought his permission to post it here.

“I write because I can’t do normal work like other people.”

Orhan Pamuk, winner of 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature

“Words on a page give the world coherence.”

Alberto Manguel, Into the Looking-Glass Wood: Essays on Books, Reading, and the World

Photo courtesy Scriatic (CC)

Writers write. If you’re a writer, you can’t help yourself. Putting words on paper, or onto a computer screen, is part of who you are. Writing helps us understand and give order to our chaotic lives and to a turbulent world.

Most writers want others to read their work. We want attention, validation, reassurance, fame. We want to be praised, questioned, challenged. We can’t help but write, but we like it better when our words are disseminated widely.

Despite our economic troubles, there never has been a better time to be a writer, because there never have been so many avenues to publication. Consider: You can set up a Facebook or Twitter page in about two minutes and start publishing your words to your friends and colleagues. Or you can set up a blog in about five minutes and start publishing for all the world to see.

These may seem like mundane forms of publishing, but I disagree. I have 255 friends on Facebook. If I write an essay and post it on my Facebook page, it is immediately available for perusal by 255 people who, because they know me, are likely to take a look at it. How would you have accomplished such an endeavor 30 years ago? If you wrote an essay and wanted to share it with your friends and colleagues, you would have had to make photocopies and either hand them out or put them in the mail to reach those 255 people. That’s a lot of copies, a lot of envelopes, a lot of addresses to track down and a lot of stamps. This process also would take a lot more time – days, maybe weeks.

Of course, we also would like to be compensated for our writing. We want our writing to be a money-making venture, not just an obsession or hobby. This complicates matters, but it’s not an unreasonable request. In order to be paid for writing, though, we must write something that a publication is willing to buy. This often means writing that is substantially different in style and substance from what we might post on Facebook or in a personal blog.

More often than not, what we’re talking about is journalism: facts, figures, interviews, research. We must be thorough, accurate. We must explore multiple perspectives. We must delve into subjects we might not otherwise care about. And then, once we’ve gathered the materials we need, we must organize all those facts, figures, quotes and multiple perspectives into a coherent and entertaining piece of writing.

It looks easy. It’s not.

But it’s also not brain surgery. Journalism is a craft that requires a set of skills that can be developed by most people who know how to read and to write a clear sentence.

The most important trait of a good journalist is curiosity. Successful journalists are innately curious about how things work. They follow a road to see where it leads. They ask lots of questions and genuinely want to know the answers. They aren’t afraid of talking to strangers. They aren’t satisfied with the conventional wisdom.

Successful journalists also are persistent. When they ask questions, they expect answers. They aren’t deterred by roadblocks. They know there is more than one way to get the information they seek.

Sometimes, journalism isn’t such a serious business. But writing a restaurant review or reporting on a ball game still demands the same skills needed to uncover the Watergate scandal.

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Geoff Schumacher, a veteran journalist, is the director of community publications for Stephens Media. He is also the publisher of CityLife and Big Island Weekly. He has written two books, Sun, Sin & Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas and Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue (Stephens Press) and is working on two more. Schumacher was recently named editor of CityLife Books, a Stephens Press imprint. He writes a weekly column for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. For more information, see www.geoffschumacher.com.