Roger’s man in the street paper

‘Holiday Spirit Glimmers as New York Endures Another Pandemic Christmas’ – NY Times 12-24-202`

Maurice Carroll re Oswald – Boston Globe 11-25-1963 (2)

In journalism school, we learned how to do a “man in the street” story.

You see them all the time. The reporter randomly interviews people in a city or town about some current issue, development or trend, and/or breaking news. It involves a lot of shoe leather.

I am posting my own “man in the street” story from journalism school here. Note how our instructor, Maurice C. (Mickey) Carroll (a city reporter for New York Newsday), edited my submission, striking out unneeded phrases. I learned a lot from him about how — especially in newspaper writing — to make my writing more concise. I thought I already knew how. He showed by example (with an editor’s magic marker) how more words could be excised from a piece that I thought I had already done the requisite polishing of.

I am also posting here a very good example of a “man in the street” story from last week’s New York Times (“Holiday Spirit Glimmers as New York Endures Another Pandemic Christmas.” December 24, 2021). A lot of reporters were involved in doing the interviews.

I also can’t resist posting here a story I came across that my professor, Carroll, wrote about Lee Harvey Oswald that was published on November 25, 1963 when the former was a young reporter.

— posted by Roger. W. Smith

  December 28, 2021