First-Person Journalism

Look, I happen to like first-person journalism. Most of my professors in graduate school were, at best, lukewarm about the “I,” the self-conscious presence of the storyteller in an article. Some outright despised it, calling the practice narcissistic and distracting.

Used judiciously, however, first-person narrative actually does the reader a service. By inserting himself into a story, the writer is coming clean that that events he depicts might reasonably been presented — or have unfolded, even — in an entirely different way had another journalist taken it on instead. more »