Lynell George on Reporting the Essay

How to develop your voice and take writing risks

Last week, in a post on story structures, I mentioned “the reported essay.” Here is how I described the form:

A first-person story grounded in reflection and reporting. These pieces weave facts, scenes, interviews and research with personal observations and narrative storytelling.

Part of why I named this Substack “The Reported Essay” is to offer more craft conversations around this genre, and to encourage adding it as one more tool in our nonfiction toolbox, alongside other approaches like immersion journalism, narrative reconstruction, fly-on-the wall reporting, or more conventional memoir and personal essay writing.

Science Writing & Story Structures

For those of us who came up in traditional journalism, first-person writing was often frowned upon or outright discouraged (unless you had one of the few coveted roles as a columnist). In our recent Q&A, Donovan X. Ramsey mentioned how his journalism professor told him “never write yourself into a piece.”

Ramsey added: “Journalism is changing, and the needs of journalism are changing, and one of the needs is for us to be more transparent about the process.”

But literary journalism has a rich tradition of reported essays, from writers like Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Svetlana Alexievich, Jon Krakauer, and more. Recent Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists in the feature writing category include two longform reported essays by Jennifer Senior, among others. In 2021, Longreads began a separate annual “best of” category for “reported essays” distinguishing the form as separate from “personal essays.” And reported essays have also been finalists or winners in the “feature writing” category, as well as “columns and essays” of the National Magazine Awards.

Journalist Donovan X. Ramsey on "Building Something New"

The rise of audio storytelling has likely influenced the renewed popularity of the reported essay. Hosts take us along on a journey. We connect with them, and come to understand the story through them. An audio journalist often weaves in their own perspective to offer insight, reflection, or a personal connection to the reporting. Audio storytelling contains craft lessons for reported essay writers too.

Here is how Ira Glass describes the building blocks of a great audio story:

An anecdote + a sequence + bait + a moment of reflection, in which somebody steps in to say “here’s why the hell you’re listening to this story.”

There seems to be an increasing appetite and appreciation for relatable and reliable narrators. I also see this in articles and newsletters, as well as nonfiction books.

Courtney Maum

has offered classes on the “hybrid memoir,” described as writing in which “personal journeys intertwine with academic, historical, or thematic exploration, offering readers not just a story, but a journey of learning and discovery.” Journalistic approaches also fit well into this growing hybrid memoir genre. Recent examples I’ve read include: “The Best Minds,” by Jonathan Rosen, and “The Forgotten Girls,” by Monica Potts.

I have long considered Lynell George, an award-winning Los Angeles–based journalist and essayist, to be a master of the reported essay. I remember hearing her keynote conversation for The Institute for Independent Journalists, as she discussed her career journey from the LA Weekly, to the Los Angeles Times, to getting laid off, to freelancing—how she preserved and developed her own writing style at every turn.

Lynell George, author and journalist.

In

The IIJ

keynote she discussed already having an established voice writing for the LA Weekly, when she took a job at the LA Times. This voice helped her pivot to freelancing after the Times let her go in a brutal round of layoffs. Her identity was not wrapped up in a single newsroom or style of writing. George had remembered surviving an initial round of layoffs and seeing “people pick up the phone and start crying at their desks.” It was “horrific” to watch. “It made me realize you have no idea what’s going to happen here,” she said. “Do the work that matters to you, and try to do your best, and then just keep stepping.”

George talked to me recently about how she continued to grow as a writer over the years, taking risks and trusting her voice. We also discussed how she came to think about the reported essay.

In addition to being a staff writer for LA Weekly and the Los Angeles Times, her work has appeared in Alta, The New York Times; Smithsonian; Vibe; Boom: A Journal of California Preservation; Sierra; Essence; and Ms. She is the recipient of a 2017 Grammy Award for her liner notes for Otis Redding Live at the Whisky A Go Go. George is the author of three books of nonfiction: “No Crystal Stair: African Americans in the City of Angels.” “After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame.” And her recent book, “A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler,” which was a Hugo Award finalist.

Here is our conversation.

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How did you begin to think about developing your own voice and style of writing?

I was a big reader. I did apply to schools that had journalism programs, but I wasn't sure I was interested in traditional news reporting. I was a fiction writer, and a fiction reader. In college I discovered narrative journalism, but not in the classroom. I was picking up the LA Weekly, and I was picking up the LA Reader, and I was reading the voice in those papers. I realized: “There's something in this that connects to the fiction writing I am doing.”

I took a magazine writing class with Carolyn See when I was an undergrad at Loyola Marymount, because I was an English major with a writing emphasis. One of the assignments we had was to do a longform piece, a reported piece. I ended up writing about downtown LA and the artists living there illegally in lofts in the 80s. I turned it in. I still have the piece, I kept it. She wrote on it: “This could be published.” I thought: “Oh, this is something maybe I can do.” Then I just had to figure out a way. I have these skills, and I have these interests, how do I marry them? I applied for internships. The LA Weekly called. There was my path.

So you started to understand, here's a different kind of journalism, literary or narrative journalism. And you had this professor who nudged you in the direction?

Yes, we later got to know each other, and she said to me: “You would turn these pieces in, but you would never say anything in class.” She was one of the few professors I had who had a writing life outside of the classroom. She was regularly writing for The Washington Post as their book reviewer. She was also writing essays. I actually saved this really beautiful piece that she wrote about a jazz musician, Warne Marsh. I thought it was amazing. She was modeling a writing career that I didn't realize was going to be really key for me until many years later. I had one other professor who was a writer, doing more essays, and critiques, and history, looking at themes in films, engaging as a critic. I learned a lot from him, too. He was, in a way, a mentor. I did not realize how important it was at the time, but I did know that I needed to watch these people who were trying to juggle teaching and their own writing.

Yes, especially the life of a freelancer. How did you discover the reported essay, the more essayistic journalism? 

For me, discovering Joan Didion was more about looking at what she was doing as a woman, especially. After reading her, I realized what I wanted to do was write about my California, my Los Angeles, in the way that she wrote about hers. I don't think I was putting it into words that way, but I was definitely attracted to the reported essays she wrote. 

Then in reading The Village Voice, I discovered this columnist there, Guy Trebay, who was writing a column about New York. Even though I'd been to New York, and I have family in New York, the city was overwhelming. I didn't really connect with it. Reading his column made me stop and think: “Now I appreciate what the city is.” It was quirky. I could hear it. I could smell it. It was news-based. He made it real, and I could see it and live it. I felt like I was walking through it.

We're calling it “the reported essay.” When you think of the name of the form, specifically a reported essay, what does that mean to you and how did you come to understand it? 

I was always thinking of it as narrative journalism. The literary journalist. I thought I could use my fiction writing tools of description, and character building, and structure. But I was connecting it all to something that was happening in the news. So that made it urgent. Or I was explaining a place, and especially living in LA, where people outside of it can't wrap their head around it. 

Later, and it might be when I was at the LA Times and I would do stories for the magazine, I would be able to break out of the usual feature well and do an essay. When I was at the LA Weekly, there was a push to write yourself in. When I got to the LA Times, I just didn't do that. We weren't supposed to. Even when I was at the LA Weekly, I would really have to be pushed to put myself in a piece, even if it was a reported essay. I just felt like I didn't necessarily belong in there, except for being the eyes and the ears. 

I'm curious how you feel about the omniscient voice and how that sort of reigned for a long time. Then there are the voices that are masters of the form of the reported essay—many of them women, writers of color—different kinds of writers who say: “I have a connection to this world, and why mute that?” I'm just wondering what you think about this evolution, what have you had to learn or unlearn?

I think it's really true. I know for me, it was a learning curve. Especially when you are reporting things that matter to you, it's hard to not put your voice in. Even when I was teaching journalism, I would start the class off talking about objectivity. I thought it was really important to explain to them that it's almost impossible for us to be objective. Working in a newsroom, there's subjectivity with the editors. There's subjectivity in all the decisions we make: about who gets the last word in the piece, how much weight is given to a subject, where a story appears on the page. I thought about this, especially when I was starting out, how some of my voice is going to come through in the people I choose to interview. 

I remember having this conversation with my first editor at the time, Charlie Waters. I was really worried. He just addressed the elephant in the room. He said: “I know you're worried about being here.” I told him: “Good. I'm glad you said that. Now we can have an honest conversation about going forward.” I had been pulled to write one of those: “What does the Black community think about XYZ stories?” Like we are monolithic.

I remember going back to Charlie. He said: “What you do now is you shape that story with your reporting. You have the rolodex that they don't have.” The other editors were, of course, telling me: “Go talk to Jesse Jackson.” But that wasn't appropriate for this story. I already knew I didn’t want to write a story about how “all Black people” feel, because it wasn't where I wanted to go. I wanted to write something nuanced. So that was a perfect example of a story where I could not enter into the piece, because that's not the kind of piece it was. I had a range of voices in the piece. A very complex, vivid cross-section of Black LA. And that was my goal. That’s how I put my stamp on it.

I also often talk about that subjectivity in storytelling, how your subjective lens is there in how you structure the story, in who you interview, in what quotes you include. I also feel like now there's even more of a recognition that you don't always have to be invisible as a narrator, so embrace it. Many readers really do appreciate that transparency from a narrator who is doing the reporting saying “here's who I am.” Did you notice that shifting over time?

I think so too. Why pretend, right? Especially if you have someone who is writing the story with authority. Why hide that? We were working within that structure at the Times. It was very difficult in the news pages, to do anything like that, even in features. Unless you were writing a column, where you could do something personal. It wasn't until I was writing things for the magazine where they would ask me specifically: “Will you write from a personal point of view?” 

You wrote the Octavia Butler piece, “The Parable is Now,” for Alta recently, where you braid your voice, keeping your own journal, with Butler’s prose. Or the recent piece, “Crenshaw at a Crossroads,” about revitalizing a historic Black neighborhood—without forgetting its past. In that piece, about a place, you're centering us almost in your bodily experience.

I love talking to another writer about these things, because we know how and why the decisions are made. Initially, I started reporting that piece about a year ago or more, and because of the delays my editor kept coming back to me, and I said: “There is nothing to write about yet.” I mean, it's about hopes and dreams. I don't mean that in a bad way. But I was just sorting out the story idea. Literally, I'm not kidding when I say I put in this afterthought sentence in my pitch to him, I said: “Oh and by the way, this is all happening in the neighborhood I grew up in.” When he saw that, he told me: “Well, this needs to be said.”

So as the project evolved, our thinking about the piece evolved. Then when a themed issue came up about “reckoning with the West,” that's what he called me again. He said: “You know how I said I think you know you should be in the story? Now, I think it really does need to be an essay, and you can feel free to lean more on your personal story, if that fits.” The reported essay then became this sort of vivid tableau. All of us in the story have our Crenshaws. That unifies the story. 

So you were working with the themes of being rooted. You begin with your bodily presence within this location. And this place that is very much like a character in the story, braided with all the voices who embody it too. Then there are the traces of trauma, this idea that we pass on trauma. It does all tie it together, even with the different quotes that you have from the people talking about how: “We will write the narrative this time.” It comes together under the theme. 

Yes, I had to go out and talk to people. I had to walk through my own memories. I even told my editor I like to drive by my old house regularly to check on it. I was very upset when they cut down this tree on the street. My street has not been gentrified at all. It looks pretty much the same as it always did. The beauty of Zillow is that I can see that somebody has gone in and completely destroyed the inside of our house, which is very despairing. It was a house from 1930 and I'm sure they were trying to update it. It took all the charm out, but the fact that I am still invested in this house that I haven't lived in for 50 years.

I think we all do that. I drive by my old house from the little town that I used to live in. It's such a formative part of your upbringing. The editor that you worked with sounds like a good editor, by the way. 

Oh, he's wonderful. I just adore him. I really do. Blaise Zerega. We've done so many different kinds of stories over the last few years.

Did he edit “The Parable is Now” piece? 

That was Matt Haber, and he was open to this odd idea I had. I just didn't want to write: “Oh my god, the parables are true,” because everyone has written that, and it keeps coming up. I said to him: “I have this weird idea, and if you want it, that's fine. If it doesn't work, I'm going to keep the journal anyway.” The news cycle is what made it work. The piece wouldn't have worked otherwise, except the news was eerily mirroring her text.

Do you feel like you've hit the point in your career where you take these creative risks? Like you can say: “I'm gonna do something. Maybe you're gonna think it's weird, but I'm gonna do it.”

Yes. Sometimes, I know from the outset, that the story someone might want is not the story I should write. Or that I’ve written that story before. You want someone else, a fresh take. I’ve written, “Octavia Butler 101.” You don’t need me to do that. 

So in one case, not long ago, I pitched something completely different, that I thought they would appreciate. It was specifically about the kind of writing Butler was reaching for, because she was also interested in journalism and wanted to be a reporter, but felt she was too shy. She didn't think she could do the reporting part. She could do the research part, but I think she would have eventually been able to, because she had such good questions. So I pitched something more like that, but bit by bit, through the back and forth of our conversation, it ended up turning it into Octavia Butler, 101. It's not a bad piece. But there are many of them out there. Why repeat what’s out there? Why don't you want to be original? 

So with “The Parable is Now,” I didn't feel I repeated anyone else’s story. Matt said he was open to my approach, and I'm so grateful, because we were able to do something really unusual, and it got a lot of attention. So that felt good. 

It sounds like you have certain standards for your own work, and you do know your voice. As a freelancer, it's always challenging because you know you do want to take the assignments. But then you have those opportunities where you can find the right match with an editor and a place that also understands your voice. What kind of advice do you give to writers who really want to establish their voice?

Lately, I’ve just been reading. I’ve written some smaller pieces. I haven't worked on anything big for about a month. So I think when in this process, I'm reminded of the things that used to excite me on the page about writing, and writers, and the risks these writers took. The ones that I love the most, where I think: “Wait, you can do that on the page?” Or “I didn't realize you could do something like that." You can write dialogue that way?” Guy Trebay took all kinds of risks in his column. Because he was coming at it from a different angle, he just thought: “Well, I'm just going to do it this way.” And then the editor was open to what he brought. 

The advice I would give is to just read, read, read. See who takes risks, the risks that make sense. There are writers I can read, and I know by looking at the byline, it's them. The voice is so clear to me. Sometimes not even in the writing, it is in the structure.

You said you're reading a lot right now? Do you mind if I ask what you're reading?

I just finished reading “Colored Television,” by Danzy Senna, which I really enjoyed. I'm reading Francine Prose’s memoir, “1974.” “Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles,” by Rosecrans Baldwin. “Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me,” by Ada Calhoun. “Another Word for Love,” by Carvel Wallace. And “Consent a Memoir,” by Jill Ciment.