Stories That Need to be Told

At almost every talk I give, someone asks how I pick topics as seemingly incongruous as the Pullman Porters, the Jewish Diaspora, the birth of public relations, mental health and Satchel Paige.

What ties them together is that they are important stories that are at risk of slipping away. Why? Because they have been forgotten or told incompletely. Because first-hand witnesses are aging and their experiences have not been recorded.

Getting to those witnesses is the first step. The next is collecting everything written about the people and the era, which generally amounts to thousands of magazine and newspaper articles, hundreds of books and endless unpublished material. For Satchel alone, I have 72 pages of printed footnotes and bibliography, with lots more online.

Last week at Boston University I joined other authors in talking about that process, as described by Bill Kirtz at Poynter.org.