Jan Griesenbrock photo
I feel a great responsibility to reflect all of Waldoboro’s diversity. It might look homogenous, but it’s anything but, whether you’re talking about age, income, kinds of work, history, opinions, or landscape.
It’s important to me to reach into all the nooks and crannies of people to write about. And Waldoboro is massive! It’s just over 70 square miles, making it geographically the second largest town in the state.
It helps that I keep a long list of people I’d like to interview. I love it when someone suggests a person I’ve never heard of. Or a category of someone, of which many are missing, such as a summer person, a veterinarian, a Vietnam veteran (there are so many here!), a doctor, a blueberry farmer or picker, a lobster trap maker, and so on. I have so many holes. I love it when someone points out what else I am missing.
Adding to my urgency is that Waldoboro has the oldest population in Maine. And so, if an elder dies, much of their history vanishes. There are so many people, even in two plus years I’ve been writing this column, that I have missed. And I am so sorry about that.
What is my process if I’m interviewing you? I tell you about the column in case you haven’t read it before. I talk with you, and about why your story matters. Or maybe I am not sure what your story is, but I know your voice is important. Maybe we’ll discover it, together. Lastly, I always stress that this is your interview: we can talk about whatever you want to talk about.
Interviews last an hour, more or less. And then I take your portrait with my phone.
We might start talking about childhood in Waldoboro, or your journey here. We might touch on work or delve completely into it. We might talk about the things nagging at you, or the sweet spots in your day. It’s your interview. We will talk about whatever you want.
I record the interview on my phone, but it’s so unobtrusive, we forget it’s there. We just talk. I am always honored by the trust and courage people have to open up about the things they have held closely.
At home, I transcribe the interview. It can take a lot of time if you speak fast. Or I might struggle to make out words or an expression. I don’t use a transcription app or service because it’s important to me to hear your voice again. I want to pick up the cadence of your language and your rhythms.
I look for threads. I look for where the feelings spill out. I look for the larger story inside your personal story. I look for the first sentence. It needs to be true, but it also must arrest the reader.
I take it from there, so it all flows, so that the story tracks, so that it’s emotionally true. And then I add the brief introduction. That is my first draft.
I edit for clarity and leanness. I read it aloud to myself. And when it’s ready, I call you on the phone. This is the most collaborative part of the whole process.
Most likely, you will also ask me to email you a copy. But then, we’d no longer be having a conversation, no longer be collaborating. While I understand this urge to read instead of listen to it, I never ever send out a copy to anyone except my editor.
It’s also a rule of journalism. We never send out a copy until after it runs. I never break this rule.
Something happens when we work together over the phone. To me, it feels like we become a team in this moment, working together to make it the best it can be. And people whom I’ve interviewed tell me the same. Some kind of magic happens.
I begin by reading the entire piece back to you, including the headline, caption, introduction, and your words. We go over it section by section, word by word. We take as long as it takes. I correct the errors and read sections or the whole kaboodle back again. I delete that paragraph you feel uncertain about and find a way to join the remaining paragraphs so the piece flows, and read it back again. We don’t stop until we both feel it’s right.
And if it’s just not working for you, you have the right to kill it. That is my promise.
I spent a lot of years working at major newspapers. Even to be having this conversation, where you are emending and I am emending — that breaks the rules of journalism, too. And I think my colleagues would be, well, horrified.
But that is one reason why people resent reporters. They think reporters are taking something from you, or worse, taking it and then getting it wrong, walking away, and leaving you to pick up the pieces.
That’s why I wanted this project to be different, to be a collaboration in which you, the person I’m sitting with, has agency just as I do. And if we step back, we can also look at this project as a model for our relationships with each other.
Yes, we live in a time of rancor and fracture, with so many versions of the truth we can’t agree on a common narrative.
But that’s exactly Waldoboro’s history! It was three centuries of disagreements, according to historian Jasper Stahl. In fact, moments of agreement and peace were so rare that, when they happened, he makes special note of them in his two volumes.
In my travels, I’ve met many people. Some are flexible, and others hold tightly to their beliefs. But almost everyone seems to yearn for more connection between us. And I say, with gentle curiosity, we can have that.