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.

