I showed up to the newsroom
for our 9:00 a.m. departure to Port
Huron with nothing more than my
phone, wallet, a pen and a singular
piece of paper folded in my coat
pocket. Meanwhile, my lovely co-
editors carried travel-sized note-
books, pens for their thoughts,
protein bars, a swiss army knife,
multiple tissues and, of course, The
Daily’s signed copy of “The Port
Huron Statement.” When I woke
up that morning, I suppose, the
only thing I truly deemed necessary
was that I made it to the car on time
and intentionally put myself in the
“I” behind my narrative.
As a writer, I struggle to think
of myself as a character — an en-
tity that must be made real to the
reader. It’s easy to let my person-
hood hide behind the implications
of a story when the alternative
threatens to expose the raw identity
buried within the all-encompassing
“I” of my sentences. In the words
of American essayist and fiction
writer, Philip Lopate, I’d rather let
my readers perceive the “I” of my
narrative as a “slender telephone
pole standing in the sentence, try-
ing to catch a few signals.” Yet, as a
Statement columnist turned editor,
I’ve been taught to appreciate the
characterization of my “I.” Those
who used this most personal pro-
noun before me had the courage to
reach for the intangible threads of a
story and pull at the seams between
fiction and reality. They used “I”
to fill the gap between storytelling
and journalism — immersing them-
selves in the heart of a revolution-
ary genre and time in our history.
Joan Didion was a force to
be reckoned with in the 1960s. As
a pioneer in the new journalism
genre, Joan Didion’s “I” carried
the weight of her voice in each of
her stories. According to Mark
Z. Muggli, professor Emeritus of
English at Luther College, “Her ‘I’
goes beyond the intentionally neu-
tral voice of the daily news reporter
— it is a created, shifting character
who speaks memorably and who
sometimes anatomizes her own re-
sponses.” Likewise, author Katie
Rophie told The New York Times
in an interview, “She managed
to channel the spirit of the 1960s
and ’70s through her own highly
idiosyncratic and personal — that
is, seemingly personal — writing…
with her slightly paranoid, slightly
hysterical, high-strung sensibility.
It was a perfect conjunction of the
writer with the moment.” Didion
showed the world how to let an au-
thor’s voice and the implications of
a story work together to create an
understanding beyond the whos
and whats of standard reporting.
She paved the way for journalists
to make meaning in the nuanced
details of a subject and dig into the
forces that draw readers in.
Though Tom Hayden’s role
as a ‘60s counterculture activist
was not as a narrative journalist
like Didion, his work in the news-
room put him at the center of a
movement and voice in the era.
The Port Huron Statement, as a
manifesto, is the culmination of
student ideals and Hayden’s talent
as an author. He too felt the weight
of his voice in the narratives he
chose to write –– and so do “I”
and so should we.
Wednesday, March 22, 2023 // The Statement — 3
Taylor Schott: How creative
writing is and isn’t nurtured
The last few decades have been
bleak for the writing world. Beloved
literary magazines — even those that
have been in circulation since the
mid-90s, like the New York City-
based Bookforum — have shuttered,
or are struggling to stay afloat. The
number of college students matricu-
lating into the humanities is down
markedly. Print journalism, too, is
facing considerable changes.
Online publishing platforms
such as Substack, which have won the
favor of some novelists, are seeing a
rise in popularity. These platforms are
providing a good, necessary service.
But, as New Yorker writer Kyle Cha-
ka aptly notes, “There is no replace-
ment for institutions that cultivate a
point of view over time.” We know
that magazines are seldom profitable.
They survive while they can, and close
promptly when they can’t.
Creative writing housed within a
newspaper faces an entirely different
set of obstacles. First, the style guide:
every respectable paper has one, and
every respectable writer defies one. It
is in publications like these where you
can hyperlink to all hell, and where
jumpy,
pixelated
advertisements
crowd out your paragraphs. It is a land
dominated by typically provocative,
SEO-bred titles, and where athletic,
concise analysis takes precedence
over vaguer, more sparing, language.
Of course, consistency benefits
any organization — particularly a news-
paper, where words are currency. But
to consider a style guide as biblical —
to let it have the last say — is to deeply
misunderstand the work that sections
such as The Statement aim for.
The forces propelling journal-
ism, too: truth, accuracy, objectivity
— where the “I” is meant to dissolve, if
it exists at all, behind the curtain of re-
portage — seem diametrically opposed
to the motivations underlining creative
writing: establishing voice, patiently
crafting a plot, experimenting with syn-
tax. Following these tenets tend to re-
quire committing a few journalistic sins.
The borders between fiction and
nonfiction are, admittedly, massively
less interesting to me than the actual
language used to define, delineate,
and designate how we experience the
world. And I am, of course, full of pas-
sionate bias. But how not to be?
These observations seem to
circle a rather unavoidable question:
does creative writing even belong in
journalism? Some would go so far
as to say that the two are entirely dif-
ferent species, a rhetoric which I find
polarizing, if accurate. But in what
world can a term like creative journal-
ism be announced and not immedi-
ately register as paradoxical?
It’s been said that The Statement
is not a literary journal, either. It’s true,
we’re not. We have some funds, insti-
tutional backing, and boast a wide re-
gional audience. Very few literary jour-
nals — the exceptions being The Paris
Review and the New Yorker, though
the latter is technically a magazine —
are afforded these kinds of privileges.
But imagine if literary journals —
or the kind of writing that they attract
— were awarded the same resources,
credibility, and public fervor of legacy
publications? Print journalism isn’t
exactly lucrative, this we know, but
far more people will readily accept the
idea of journalism as a public good than
they will the same of literary journals.
So I land, however uneasily,
on this axis of priorities. I’m not
a journalist; I’m a writer who has
happened to find herself at a place
with the resources to support good
writing. Any opportunity I have to
smuggle fictive qualities through
the vehicle of journalism, and to
be frank about my commitment to
emotional truth as opposed to pub-
lic record, I feverishly seize.
Jeremy Weine/DAILY
Reese Martin: The story of an “I”
Jeremy Weine/DAILY
John and Reese learn about boats at the Port Huron Museum.
Taylor opens Tom Hayden’s The Port Huron Statement near the location of
its completion some 61 years earlier.