The 3 Things in Every Great Magazine Story
According to legendary editor Graydon Carter
There are three ways to judge a restaurant: food, service and price. You need at least two out of the three to make it worthwhile.
You can take a date to a restaurant with good food and friendly wait staff that’s expensive. You can meet a friend at a place with good, cheap food but lousy service. And you can eat by yourself at a place that has cheap subpar food if it comes with a smile.
And if you can get all three? That’s a place to become a regular at.
The same is true of magazine stories. Legendary Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter has often said the three ways to judge a story.
“Magazine stories, the best ones anyway, are generally a combination of three elements: access, narrative, and disclosure,” he wrote in 2013.
Here’s what he meant:
Access: An exclusive interview with a celebrity, an important politician or an eyewitness to a crime or natural disaster. Behind-the-scenes access to the making of a movie or the decisions in a corporate boardroom. A visit to a place not easily reachable by most people such as a war zone.
Disclosure: Uncovering a dramatic story that has never been told before. Giving new information on a familiar story, such as how a decision was made or what a key figure almost did before changing their mind. Sharing previously unseen documents.
Narrative: Using the techniques of novelists to tell the story. Building suspense throughout the story. Giving psychological insight into the motives of major characters at turning points. Writing with descriptive flair without lapsing into overheated prose.
Of the three, access is the most overrated, disclosure is the most important and narrative is the most easily remedied. Access usually means that it’s easy to market the story, but it doesn’t always guarantee you’ll learn anything new or interesting from it. If you or your news outlet depend on access for future stories, then you’ll also be tempted to pull back on the more critical judgements that would help make the story better.
Disclosure is the most important, since it means telling the reader something new. It’s often in conflict with access, since disclosure means sharing information that the subject would most likely rather be kept quiet. But there are times where the subject’s needs align with the journalists. After a big public failure, such as the loss of a campaign or a failed product launch, sources will often open up in order to pin the blame on someone else or explain why it was out of their hands.
Narrative is the most easily remedied, but the main ingredient the writer needs is time. It’s hard to write a gripping narrative with well-fleshed out characters and sharp word choice, so the more time you have between when you finish your reporting and when you have to turn your story in, the better it will be. Magazine stories that aren’t tied to breaking news tend to be better written for this reason. Newspaper stories that run on Sunday have the same luxury.
Here’s a look at how these factors work together in magazine stories:
Access + Narrative - Disclosure
Typical: A profile of a young actress appearing in a big summer movie. The reporter spends a decent amount of time with the subject and the story is nicely written, but the author doesn’t really have anything to say.
Tip-off: If the piece has a long description of what the actress ate for lunch, that’s probably the entire amount of time the reporter was with her.
Example: “Dwayne Johnson for President!” Caity Weaver
Access + Disclosure - Narrative
Typical: A behind-the-scenes look at how a political candidate lost, including damaging campaign emails. The story has lots of interesting scoops but it’s mostly aimed at political insiders.
Tip-off: If the piece isn’t focused on two or three key players in the campaign, it’s probably too unwieldy to be a gripping read.
Example: “12 Days That Stunned a Nation,” Mark Murray
Narrative + Disclosure - Access
Typical: A big-picture story on how a major corporation made a fatal business decision using only publicly available information. The piece helps explain what happened and why, but it has no inside sources.
Tip-off: Authors are usually pretty up-front when a piece is done without the cooperation of the subject.
Example: “Kanye West Has a Goblet,” Jonah Weiner
It could fairly be said that newspapers tell you about the world, and that magazines, the best ones, tell you about their world.
— Graydon Carter
