Profiles

Jacqui Banaszynski

(taken from 2003 Nieman Conference, “Profiles in Journalism,” Session #44)

Why write profiles? Successful profiles contain all the essential elements of narrative journalism.

Good profile writing demands good interviewing -- a skill that transcends the form. The writer

must learn how to describe people and place: to locate characters, to describe them physically, to

explain their motivations. Profiles also teach responsible reporting. When you’re writing about

one other person -- and that person knows it -- you must get it right.

Profiles provide specificity. They allow us to work at both ends of the ladder of

abstraction. The profile is the micro that illustrates the macro. In my “AIDS in the Heartland”

series, I wrote very intimately about two gay farmers from Minnesota who were dying of AIDS.

The story was about much more than the two of them as individuals. It was about how people

live and die with AIDS, and how their community deals with it.

The story’s specificity -- Dick Hanson and Bert Henningson, farmers and political

activists -- sits at the bottom of the ladder of abstraction. What these two men represented –

commitment, love, death and family struggle – is at the top of the ladder. Many newspaper

stories are boring because they stay in the middle. There are no specific people, but no great

themes, either. These stories have nothing to ground them, and nothing to raise them above the
Part 3: Name Your Sub-Genre -2-
Profiles Jacqui Banaszynski

mundane.

The key to reporting for a profile is figuring out the questions. Interviews are crucial and

not just with the person being profiled. Who are the people around him or her? Who will reveal

something about the main character? Who knows the defining moments that shaped that person’s

life? You need to interview those people.

You must ask deep questions. What has defined this person? What is this person’s

motivation? Value system? Approach to life? “Who is this person?” To reach this deeply, you

must ask questions that seem rather abstract. I once asked six men to were crossing Antarctica on

foot – and almost died in the process – whether Antarctica was male or female, and why. The

question helped them relate to the continent in a new and personal way. Ask people what they

worry about most, or who most matters to them, or what makes them most afraid. Always follow

these abstract questions with concrete ones, to elicit specific anecdotes.

Some people love to talk about themselves. A few people love to talk about themselves

but don’t say much that is useful. They say things like, “The Lord made me do it” or, “I’ve got to

hand it to my teammates.” Your job as an interviewer is to turn the subject into a storyteller.

Ask questions so layered, so deep, and so odd that they elicit unusual responses. Take the

person to places she wouldn’t normally go. Ask questions that require descriptive answers. If

your profile hinges on an important decision the subject had to make, ask them everything about

the day of the decision. What kind of day was it? What was the first thing you did when you
Part 3: Name Your Sub-Genre -3-
Profiles Jacqui Banaszynski

woke up in the morning? Do you remember what you had for breakfast? What was the weather

was like? What were you wearing? Who did you think about that day? Did the phone ring?

Walk me through the first two hours of your day. These things might not seem relevant to the

story, but they serve to put the person back in the moment. Push a bit. Make some assumptions

that require them to validate what you say, or to argue with you.

I once did a press conference with a top Olympic runner. Her resume painted the portrait

of a woman who had it all: stellar athletic career, law degree, rich and adoring husband, cover-

girl looks. But she was in her thirties and still running. I asked if she was worried about what was

missing from that picture: a baby. Was she racing her own biological clock? That made for a far

more interesting story than another analysis of her running form.

Immerse yourself in your interviews. You must focus so intently on the moment that your

mind is fully with the person you are interviewing. You need to listen so hard that you can move

with the person, take another step forward or pull back. Don’t worry about your list of questions,

your editor, or your story lede. Worry only about that person and what you can get from him. A

friend of mine calls this full-body reporting. If you do it right, you will feel exhausted when you

leave the interview.

The most important thing to any writing – and especially profile-writing -- is the telling

detail. Reporters complain that editors remove the telling details from their profiles. Sometimes

the editors do that because the details weren’t relevant enough. If it’s not showing something

important, it’s not essential. Keep reporting until you find the absolutely essential details.
Part 3: Name Your Sub-Genre -4-
Profiles Jacqui Banaszynski

Reporting for profiles requires moving in close. Then, you have to pull back. When you

shift from reporting to writing, you must distance yourself from the characters. When you sit

down at your desk, your allegiance switches. It feels as if your characters are looking over your

shoulder, but you must turn your back on them. You don’t lose respect for your subjects or their

story, but your allegiance must be with the reader.

After I’ve edited a profile, it must pass a test before I consider it finished. I ask the writer

to give the piece to a reader who knows nothing about it. That new reader must be able to answer

two questions, each in one sentence. First: How would you characterize this person? Second: At

the end of the piece do you know whether or not you like the person? If the answers aren’t what

the writer expected, the profile isn’t finished.

There are many different kinds of profiles. I’ll describe just three. In my own

terminology, they are: cradle-to-current, niche, and paragraph profiles.

Cradle-to-current profile

After Gary Ridgway was arrested as the Green River Killer, responsible for murdering 48

women in Washington state, The Seattle Times wrote a profile that included everything about his

life: where he grew up, the defining moments of his life -- when he first showed signs of

pathology, when the police started chasing him. This type of profile requires knowing the full

sweep of a person’s life. It demands a huge investment of time. A cradle-to-current profile is

needed only in rare circumstances.

Part 3: Name Your Sub-Genre -5-
Profiles Jacqui Banaszynski

Niche profile

The niche profile is one of my favorites. It gets profiles in the newspaper quickly. You

can do a niche profile, under 1,000 words, in just a couple of days. The key to the niche profile is

figuring out exactly why a person is in the news and building on that.

While we had to do a cradle-to-crime profile of Gary Ridgway, we might have included a

niche profile of the defense attorney who had to represent him. The niche profile doesn’t need to

include where she was born or what she did in fifth grade, unless that directly relates to her role

as Ridgway’s attorney. Her biographical information can be compressed, run as a small box or in

tight form within the story. A niche profile describes how she came to the role and whether

defending a serial killer presents an internal conflict for her.

To write a successful niche profile, you must have a very clear idea of what you are

looking for: telling detail and quotes that serve the story’s purpose.

Paragraph profile

The shortest profiles aren’t really profiles at all, but single paragraphs within larger

stories. A paragraph profile transforms a fairly flat story into one with real characters. That helps

your readers move through the story, because names are no longer merely names. The paragraph

profile reveals something about a person’s character that is germane to the broader story.

While writing the most mundane beat stories, paragraph profiles allow you to push

yourself to do the kind of reporting required for narrative writing. They force you to dig deeper –
Part 3: Name Your Sub-Genre -6-
Profiles Jacqui Banaszynski

and to focus on what is truly relevant about the subject.

Again, if you were covering the Ridgway case, rather than name the detective who finally

made the case, you might include a paragraph profile. That profile might say the detective had

turned the hunt for the Green River Killer into a 25-year obsession that had haunted his dreams

and filled dozens of boxes with dead-end leads. You might mention that the judge said a prayer

or listened to a favorite song before he came into court that day.

There are many kinds of profiles, including those that don’t profile a person. The

essential character could be a place, or a building, or a meeting. You don’t profile a City Council

meeting by reporting on the results, or who voted on what, but by profiling the personality of the

meeting, its pace, even its silliness. If you profile a snowplow driver, the main character could be

the truck, the road, the snow, or the driver. Regardless of the subject, regarding people carefully

will allow you to elucidate it.