Sullivan Wordshttp://www.sullivanwords.com/sullivan-words/en-US2010-08-20T05:53:43ZSquarespace Site Server v5.11.5 (http://www.squarespace.com/)A Writing Exercisehttp://www.sullivanwords.com/sullivan-words/2010/1/2/a-writing-exercise.htmlTimothy Sullivan2010-01-02T16:36:13ZFathers Fiction Memoir World War II Writing   Six Sentences is an online literary project that presents writers with an interesting challenge: write a piece of fiction in six sentences, no more, no less. It's ably edited by Robert McEvily and, if you have any interest in flash fiction, I think you'll enjoy it. My contribution, which is set during the Battle of the Bulge, is called "Farmhouse."

]]>Old-School Foreign Correspondencehttp://www.sullivanwords.com/sullivan-words/2009/11/18/old-school-foreign-correspondence.htmlTimothy Sullivan2009-11-19T04:30:20ZJournalism Media Non-fiction Writing   I started out as a journalist 34 years ago in the newspaper business. I’m now a television producer, but my heart is still in print. Today, as newspapers and magazines face the specter of obsolescence, print journalism is poised at a crossroads from which it cannot turn back. Great work is still being published, but the contemporary reader must look harder than ever to find it. That’s why I was so happy a year ago to find Dispatches, then a new quarterly of foreign correspondence. Edited by Mort Rosenblum and Gary Knight, Dispatches publishes a single-topic issue every three months, packed with excellent reporting and arresting photography. First-year topics have included Russia, Iraq, poverty, climate change, and the USA as seen from abroad.
   As a writer/editor who’s worked in the mainstream media for three decades, my journalistic values are old school, but I understand they won’t survive if they can’t keep pace with the sensibilities of the 21^st Century marketplace. With my first glance at Dispatches, I knew I’d found the real thing: deep-sourced, difficult reporting, conveyed through vivid writing and bold packaging. This is the stuff of Orwell, Fisk and Kapuściński. If you’re looking for frank analysis about what’s really happening in the world beyond America, and if you value great journalism, you must read Dispatches. You won’t regret a minute of it. 

]]>Fear of Fallinghttp://www.sullivanwords.com/sullivan-words/2009/2/14/fear-of-falling.htmlTimothy Sullivan2009-02-14T20:11:04ZMemoir Outward Bound rock climbing     Craig, the Outward Bound instructor down there on the ground, couldn’t know precisely what I was seeing; he couldn’t know on which small bumps in the rock my eyes fell, but he was familiar with the shelf that was blocking my path and the routes across it. He also knew something I didn’t: he knew the nature of the decision I was going to have to make to finish this climb.
     The shelf was several feet above my head; it stuck out of the rock like a skewed mantelpiece, wider on the left, protruding further from the cliff-face on that side. I’d have to cover less distance to get over the top if I chose the right side, but I saw nothing above the shelf except smooth rock, nothing to grab hold of, nothing to keep me up there. I might be able to push myself over the right side from where I stood, but then I’d be scratching frantically for handholds before falling backward into space. (I could see myself falling when I looked up there.) If I went to the left, the initial effort would have to be greater, but I could see potential handholds above the shelf on that side; if I could get onto the top of it, I might be able to stand there for a moment and grab something.]]>The Ghost at the Foot of the Bedhttp://www.sullivanwords.com/sullivan-words/2008/11/15/the-ghost-at-the-foot-of-the-bed.htmlTimothy Sullivan2008-11-15T21:00:23ZFathers Memoir Non-fiction World War II Writing     One morning his younger brother came to visit and was surprised to find Dad agitated and confused. “What’s wrong?” asked my uncle.
     “He was just standing there,” said Dad, “at the foot of the bed, in his uniform. The German. He was just standing there looking at me. He was right there, in his uniform. He was there until you walked in, Willy, staring at me.”
    It took my uncle a little while to calm Dad down and get him to tell the whole story. The young German my father saw that morning was a soldier he had killed in 1944. Dad was a first sergeant with the Ninth U.S. Infantry Division and fought in the invasions of North Africa, Sicily and Normandy. In addition to a Bronze Star with two oak leaf clusters and a Purple Heart, he earned eight battle stars. His unit, the 47th Regiment, landed at Utah Beach on June 10, four days after D-Day. He apparently ran into this particular German shortly thereafter.]]>Culture vs. Politicshttp://www.sullivanwords.com/sullivan-words/2008/11/14/culture-vs-politics.htmlTimothy Sullivan2008-11-15T02:20:18ZJournalism Media Non-fiction Writing    Perhaps the best essay I read in the run-up to the election of President Barack Obama was "The Triumph of Culture over Politics" by Lee Siegel in The Wall Street Journal. It was a masterful job of synthesizing a lot of complicated campaign undercurrents. "Liberals always think that there is something broken in politics," wrote Siegel. "Conservatives always think that there is something wrong with the culture."
    There are aspects of this essay that are moot now that the Democrats have racked up a convincing national victory and, in hindsight, it's easy to say Siegel gave the Republicans too much credit, but his theme is still ripe for debate. Here's a sample: "Liberals segregate culture from ordinary existence. They will 'do' culture and then 'do' the rest of life -- gaze at a Vermeer, say, and then work on finding the perfect daycare center. But for conservatives, raising children, using the discipline of faith to endure illness or setback, cherishing life at its conception are cultural tasks and values inseparable from the challenges of everyday living."
    Check it out if you've got 20 minutes to spare.

]]>Dateline: Africahttp://www.sullivanwords.com/sullivan-words/2008/4/9/dateline-africa.htmlTimothy Sullivan2008-04-10T01:19:14ZJournalism Media Non-fiction Writing  This has happened before; just when I'm considering letting my subscription to National Geographic lapse, a new issue shows up with a startling piece of work, the kind of journalism that reminds me why I love this craft, and why I  respect the people who really do it well. I'm talking about the cover story for the April '08 issue, "Lost in the Sahel," by Paul Salopek.
    The Sahel is an arrid zone at the southern edge of the Sahara desert, a strip of land that runs the entire width of Africa. During his journey through the Sahel for NatGeo, Salopek ran into several horrendous situations, including finding himself, his driver and his interpreter arrested in Darfur, thrown into jail for five weeks, and beaten for having illegally crossed the border from Chad into Sudan. That part of the story is harrowing enough, but the strength of the piece relies chiefly on the quality of Salopek's writing and attention to detail. The Sudanese guerillas who capture our correspondent (and trade him to government soldiers for a carton of uniforms) proudly show off their mobile phones, which display photos of the burning towers of the World Trade Center. When he goes on a hunger strike, his captors threaten to force feed him "like Guantanamo." Then there's the refugee he meets from Darfur, a Muslim himself, whose fervent hope is that his infant son will grow up to be a killer of Arabs.
    Salopek also tells stories of gentle, generous people in the Sahel, and there's a wealth of surprising information, such as the fact that global warming has resulted in more rainfall in the region, meaning more vegetation and a welcome revival of local agriculture. This is a fine piece of reporting.

]]>Saramago's Curious Stylehttp://www.sullivanwords.com/sullivan-words/2008/1/19/saramagos-curious-style.htmlTimothy Sullivan2008-01-19T16:49:45ZBooks Fiction Spain Writing    While on Christmas vacation I read The Stone Raft, my first encounter with the unusual style of Jose Saramago, the Portuguese novelist who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998. The stone raft of the title refers to the Iberian peninsula, which is set adrift in the Atlantic Ocean after the Pyrenees mountains split down the middle. The novel focuses on a journey across Iberia taken by five people, all of whom have had experiences that, like the sudden crackup of the Pyrenees, defy the laws of the physical universe.
    More intriguing to me, however, than this fantastic plot is the style in which Saramago writes. He pays little heed to the conventions of usage and punctuation, and the run-on sentence structure he employs takes some getting used to. But his ideas, imagery, and affection for his characters were all very attractive to me. Here's just one example of his style, a sentence I particularly like ("Deux Chevaux" is the Citroen car in which the characters travel):
   "And what I'd like to know is what moves inside us and where does it go, no, I'm not talking about worms, microbes, bacteria, those living creatures that inhabit us, I'm referring to something else, something that moves and perhaps moves us at the same time, just as constellation, galaxy, solar system, sun, earth, sea, peninsula, and Deux Chevaux move and move us with them, what is the name, finally, of the thing that moves all the rest, from one end of the chain to the other, or perhaps there is no chain and the universe is a ring at once so thin that apparently only we and what is inside us fit into it and so thick that it can accommodate the maximum dimension of the universe, which is the ring itself, what is the name of what follows after us."
   Wow.  

]]>Updates: Jogger and OKBombhttp://www.sullivanwords.com/sullivan-words/2007/12/1/updates-jogger-and-okbomb.htmlTimothy Sullivan2007-12-01T18:24:11ZBooks Journalism Media Non-fiction Writing   Here are updates on two articles in this journal that were originally published a few years ago:
   My essay "Presumption of Uncertainty" was published in The American Lawyer magazine in 2003. For more recent updates on the case, conduct a Google search on "Central Park Jogger" and you'll find a wealth of material. One of the best pieces I've read about the verdicts being overturned was Sydney Schanberg's analysis in The Village Voice. A search will also turn up a documentary in the American Justice series on A&E called "The Central Park Jogger Case: What Went Wrong?" Also, in the years since I wrote "Presumption of Uncertainty," Trisha Meili has abandoned her anonymity and published her own book, "I Am The Central Park Jogger."
    I wrote "A Matter of Life and Death" for Court TV's website in 1997, during jury selection in the Terry Nichols trial. Nichols was convicted of conspiracy to blow up the Murrah Building and eight counts of manslaughter, but was acquitted of 168 murder charges, and the jury declined to impose a death sentence. A Google search for "Terry Nichols" will get you updates from his subsequent state murder trial, and his more recent allegations of the FBI's prior knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing. Also, the Online Newshour at PBS has an archive of its coverage of the federal trial, including some of my reports for The Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

]]>Spoken Wordshttp://www.sullivanwords.com/sullivan-words/2007/11/27/spoken-words.htmlTimothy Sullivan2007-11-27T23:50:57ZJournalism Media Radio Sirius   I was the substitute host of a talk-radio show called Court TV Morning on Sirius Satellite Radio from spring of 2006 until it was discontinued at the close of 2007. Because the show aired on the Court TV channel, the overall theme was crime/legal news, but I did my best to stretch the topics into the realms of politics and international affairs whenever possible.
   I had a blast. The talk-radio format is wonderful because of the freedom it allows, the copious amounts of time available, and the opportunity to have serious discussions with a wide range of guests, including not only trial lawyers and legal scholars, but authors and experts on all manner of subjects. Having been a TV correspondent and producer for many years, and a print reporter and editor long before that, I've found radio to be a relaxed and more accommodating medium. It's a lot easier to produce than TV, and one can get much deeper into more complex subject matter than is the case on TV, what with the absurdly short attention span television imposes on talent and viewers alike.
   At the end of this post you'll see the control panel for a podcast, which includes a few highlights from my more energetic radio rants. Topics include the notorious shoe-bomber Richard Reid, the question of whether the US tortures terrorism suspects, and the State Department's use of mercenaries in Iraq. By the way, the other voices you'll hear are those of two pals of mine, Glen Jones, a DJ on WFMU radio out of New Jersey, and Bob Regan, who ran Court TV's News Center. Just click the "play" button; it runs about three-and-a-half minutes.

 

]]>Presumption of Uncertaintyhttp://www.sullivanwords.com/sullivan-words/2007/11/27/presumption-of-uncertainty.htmlTimothy Sullivan2007-11-27T19:08:45ZBooks Media Non-fiction Writing    In a big case, like those concerning the Oklahoma City bombing, the siege at Waco, and the rape of the Central Park jogger, it's a frightening moment. Frightening because we in the press corps know that convictions are virtually inevitable in such cases and, therefore, we also know that if the defense team's denials are based in truth, a huge injustice is about to take place.
    The recent vacating of rape and assault convictions in the case of the Central Park jogger suggests that such an injustice may have needlessly cost each of five New York City men more than seven years of liberty (one served more than 12 years). I say the ruling "suggests" as much because, even after a fresh, exhaustive investigation into startling new evidence, it is still not entirely clear that the original defendants were wrongly convicted.
    Ten years ago I wrote a book about the trials. The book examined the trial strategy and tactics of a team of highly skilled, dedicated prosecutors and the opposing efforts of five defense attorneys of varying, and generally less, talent. It also analyzed the lengthy deliberations and negotiations of two juries, based on interviews with nine jurors from the first trial and seven from the second.]]>