Zimmermans: Human touch to bare bones facts

Beware: Dull leads are dull, whatever device is used

By Paula LaRocque

Journalism’s chief device for  humanizing a story beginning – the “Zimmerman” lead – begins with one person who, in microcosm, represents everyone affected by the story’s issue or subject.

Zimmermans work well – when they work. But too often they begin with some unknown person who says and does nothing very interesting. Dull is dull, whatever the device.

But there are good Zimmermans. The leads here balance those we saw last time and show us why the Zimmerman remains popular despite its many failures. Properly conceived and delivered, it’s quick, interesting, and hangs human flesh on bare-bone facts. The people in successful Zimmermans are more engaging than the facts  – that’s why they’re there. They genuinely and interestingly represent the story, their comments are pertinent and succinct, and they can make potentially dry stories come alive.

Mitchell Zuckoff of The Boston Globe deals with pending child labor law that would conflict with certain provisions in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade:

Her name was Lesly Solorzano. And at 15, she was probably too young to be speaking for 200 million people.

But there she was, mustering her confidence and pushing back her soft black hair, telling members of the U.S. Senate about the two years she spent making Liz Claiborne sweaters in a Honduran factory, working up to 80 hours a week for 38 cents an hour. . . .

She told them about the Korean factory managers who strike and belittle the young workers, and about the ones who “like to touch the girls.” She told them about locked bathrooms, choking dust, and impossible quotas.

 Then she made what seemed to her a simple plea: Pass pending legislation, called the Child Labor Deterrence Act,that would outlaw U.S. imports of all products made by children younger than 15.

But what neither she nor the estimated 200 million other child laborers worldwide could know was that, in the new age of global free trade, fulfilling her request would be anything but simple.

 Merle English of New York Newsday puts a simple but intriguing Zimmerman on a scam story:

Malkie B. thought she was making an investment. Instead, she lost her wedding and engagement rings, and most of her family’s life savings.

 Caleb Solomon of The Wall Street Journal uses one parent to get into this story about baby boomers who delayed having children and now find parenthood “takes its toll on their stiff, creaking bodies”:

To Wayne Grant, the 45-year-old dad of two blond, blue-eyed cherubs, life as father reminds him of the hazing and forced marches . . . more than a quarter of a century ago at West Point.

 “You don’t get much sleep, you have a lot of fatigue,” and, he adds, you get hurt. “But I had an 18-year-old body then.”

 Good Zimmermans often depend on a sense of drama as well as keen writing skill. Ken Armstrong of the Chicago Tribune writes about courts forcing parents to accompany their truant children to classes:

Jan Neely graduated from high school 21 years ago, but there she sits, in a classroom at Buffalo Grove High School, wishing she weren’t there.

 While the teen-agers around her take spelling, math, and social studies, Neely reads a book or does paperwork for a trucking company she recently started with her husband. Sometimes she steals away to the boiler room for a cigarette.

 But if she leaves early, she goes to jail.

 Mary Murphy of The Orlando Sentinel writes about the teen fad of drinking a flower tea that can cause hallucinations, fever, even death:

Jonathan Snyder couldn’t breathe. The rattlesnakes coiled around his arms and slithered down his legs. . . .

The thrill-seeking 17-year-old got more than he expected from drinking tea brewed from the flowers of a common backyard plant: He ended up in a hospital.

The culprit was the lovely, delicate – and deadly – angel trumpet.

Inherently interesting and novel stories can be made even more so through the right Zimmerman. Jack Jackson, a contributing writer for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, begins his story about folks who work in the “cemetery business”:

His friends call him the ‘Roach Man.’ He works among the dead, in an environment that would give many people the willies. He opens long-sealed crypts and tombs, rearranges the mummified or decaying bodies inside, sweeps out deteriorating caskets (sometimes crawling way inside to do it), making room for the brand-new shiny casket that contains another body.

Perry Mathieu, caretaker of St. Roch Cemeteries, says he has one of the best jobs in town.

These works show that strong Zimmermans – unlike the weak variety – are not tedious impediments that merely delay the story, but high-speed thoroughfares that speed straight to its heart.

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Paula LaRocque is an assistant managing editor and writing coach for The Dallas Morning News.

Source: Quill, Jan95, Vol. 83 Issue 1