In case you missed it during Monday’s holiday, The New York Times published a magazine-length profile of a young man and a young woman, each of whom have Asperger’s, who are building a loving relationship together. I found it noteworthy for several reasons.
First, it is simply a great story. Jack Robison, 21, and Kirsten Lindsmith, 20, come across as a lovely, highly intelligent young couple who understand the ways in which they they differ from many people around them. They respond, not with self-pity, resignation or resentment, but with a constructive self-awareness that is not common even in ordinary adults of greater years. Any parent ought to be proud to have raised young people like Kirsten and Jack.
The couple is part of a generation in which autism spectrum disorders have been diagnosed in far more numbers than ever before. Commonly in the past, severely autistic children would have been marginalized or institutionalized, while individuals with Asperger’s would have been considered eccentric or anti-social. However, Baby Boom parents of the 1980s and 1990s were not prepared to write off their kids’ potential so quickly. Scientists, therapists and researchers of that era found new ways to help youths with autism and related conditions adapt to, and interact with, the world around them. As this generation has grown, it has formed its own support and study networks, such as the website WrongPlanet.net.
As the Times article notes, Jack and Kirsten are part of that support structure. They have spoken to various parent and school groups, and they appear along with WrongPlanet founder Alex Plank in segments for Autism Talk TV on the website.
The second thing that struck me about the article was that I was fortunate to be in Florida when I read it. Had I been at our New York home, I would have had the physical newspaper dropped in my driveway. Amy Harmon’s article would have appeared squarely in the middle of the front page, and I would almost certainly have read through the jump to where it finished with the rest of the national news. And that would have been it. I would not have written this column, because I really have nothing to say about Asperger’s that the newspaper did not already cover.
But because I am in Fort Lauderdale this week, I read the story on The Times’ website, which allowed me to better appreciate the work that Harmon and her colleagues put into this piece. Monday’s story is a great example of how modern journalism has moved beyond the printed page and the television network news segment.
Harmon’s piece contained at least six distinct elements, all of which were readily accessible online, but four of which cannot be provided via newsprint. My traditional newspaper would have contained the article text and some still photographs. That’s all the dead-tree version can deliver.
Online, the article was accompanied by a video summary, “Love on the Spectrum,” that ran 5 minutes 15 seconds. Think of this as the “television” version of the story. It’s the cable-news version, however. Traditional network evening news shows have only 22 minutes of non-commercial time each night, a figure that has not changed since the 1960s. A typical segment on one of those programs might get only half the time of Love on the Spectrum.
Interspersed within Harmon’s online articles were hyperlinks to video clips from interviews she conducted with Jack and Kirsten as she reported the story. These are the electronic equivalent of the written article’s direct quotes. When I was writing for newspapers, I used direct quotes as much as I could, to let the subjects tell a story in their own words. Broadcasters, both on TV and radio, use interview clips the same way. (Those recorded quotes from sources that you hear on radio newscasts are called “actualities” in the trade, or at least, that’s what we called them when I was a working journalist.)
Harmon’s article has plenty of traditional written quotes, but the video versions are, naturally, a more powerful and effective window onto the people behind the story. Watching Kirsten and Jack talk to the reporter, we get a better sense of how unselfishly open and un-self-conscious they are as they discuss some of the most intimate challenges of their lives. I had already finished the entire written article, but going back and viewing the video clips made me feel I knew the young couple better.
Then there are the hyperlinks that a web-based article can provide to direct the audience to resources like WrongPlanet. Printed newspapers don’t have the space to include many such links. On the web, readers can get as deep into a subject as the reporters who bring them the stories in the first place, and often the reader can choose to go even deeper. There is nothing new about this observation, but knowing that the tools exist, and seeing them used as effectively as Harmon used them in her piece, is not the same thing.
Finally, Monday’s story was not a one-time effort. The Times is covering the coming of age of this generation of autistic youth in a series that began in September. Like any good news web site these days, The Times provided links to its prior work on this topic, and it also invited readers to share their stories with journalists on the national desk.
Monday’s article struck me as a textbook example of modern enterprise reporting at its best. I don’t know Harmon, but I know she is not a run-of-the-mill reporter. She has won two Pulitzer Prizes, first as part of a 2001 team that explored race in America, and on her own in 2008 for “The DNA Age.”
Harmon focuses on the way science and technology affect the way we all live. I admire that sort of approach to one’s work, which shuns traditional boundaries such as “science reporter” or “lifestyles reporter.” It is interesting, and gratifying, to see a journalist who is so pragmatic in her approach and so adept with all the modern tools of her craft. Harmon is not a kid fresh out of school who learned to use a mouse before she could use a fork and knife, though she is not a graybeard of my generation, either. She is a veteran journalist who seems to have made it her business to get comfortable working with the new tools of her trade. We all should do our best to adapt to the times in which we live.
That includes me. I’m not getting rid of the dead-tree New York Times subscription just yet. It’s still adequate for telling me when Congress has passed the latest five-minute extension of a tax law, or who won last night’s ballgame (except if the game was on the West Coast or had a long rain delay). But when it comes to something I really want to know more about, I’m going to look at my newsprint paper a little differently from now on. I’m going to set it aside to go online and get, as the late commentator Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story.
Posted by Larry M. Elkin, CPA, CFP®
In case you missed it during Monday’s holiday, The New York Times published a magazine-length profile of a young man and a young woman, each of whom have Asperger’s, who are building a loving relationship together. I found it noteworthy for several reasons.
First, it is simply a great story. Jack Robison, 21, and Kirsten Lindsmith, 20, come across as a lovely, highly intelligent young couple who understand the ways in which they they differ from many people around them. They respond, not with self-pity, resignation or resentment, but with a constructive self-awareness that is not common even in ordinary adults of greater years. Any parent ought to be proud to have raised young people like Kirsten and Jack.
The couple is part of a generation in which autism spectrum disorders have been diagnosed in far more numbers than ever before. Commonly in the past, severely autistic children would have been marginalized or institutionalized, while individuals with Asperger’s would have been considered eccentric or anti-social. However, Baby Boom parents of the 1980s and 1990s were not prepared to write off their kids’ potential so quickly. Scientists, therapists and researchers of that era found new ways to help youths with autism and related conditions adapt to, and interact with, the world around them. As this generation has grown, it has formed its own support and study networks, such as the website WrongPlanet.net.
As the Times article notes, Jack and Kirsten are part of that support structure. They have spoken to various parent and school groups, and they appear along with WrongPlanet founder Alex Plank in segments for Autism Talk TV on the website.
The second thing that struck me about the article was that I was fortunate to be in Florida when I read it. Had I been at our New York home, I would have had the physical newspaper dropped in my driveway. Amy Harmon’s article would have appeared squarely in the middle of the front page, and I would almost certainly have read through the jump to where it finished with the rest of the national news. And that would have been it. I would not have written this column, because I really have nothing to say about Asperger’s that the newspaper did not already cover.
But because I am in Fort Lauderdale this week, I read the story on The Times’ website, which allowed me to better appreciate the work that Harmon and her colleagues put into this piece. Monday’s story is a great example of how modern journalism has moved beyond the printed page and the television network news segment.
Harmon’s piece contained at least six distinct elements, all of which were readily accessible online, but four of which cannot be provided via newsprint. My traditional newspaper would have contained the article text and some still photographs. That’s all the dead-tree version can deliver.
Online, the article was accompanied by a video summary, “Love on the Spectrum,” that ran 5 minutes 15 seconds. Think of this as the “television” version of the story. It’s the cable-news version, however. Traditional network evening news shows have only 22 minutes of non-commercial time each night, a figure that has not changed since the 1960s. A typical segment on one of those programs might get only half the time of Love on the Spectrum.
Interspersed within Harmon’s online articles were hyperlinks to video clips from interviews she conducted with Jack and Kirsten as she reported the story. These are the electronic equivalent of the written article’s direct quotes. When I was writing for newspapers, I used direct quotes as much as I could, to let the subjects tell a story in their own words. Broadcasters, both on TV and radio, use interview clips the same way. (Those recorded quotes from sources that you hear on radio newscasts are called “actualities” in the trade, or at least, that’s what we called them when I was a working journalist.)
Harmon’s article has plenty of traditional written quotes, but the video versions are, naturally, a more powerful and effective window onto the people behind the story. Watching Kirsten and Jack talk to the reporter, we get a better sense of how unselfishly open and un-self-conscious they are as they discuss some of the most intimate challenges of their lives. I had already finished the entire written article, but going back and viewing the video clips made me feel I knew the young couple better.
Then there are the hyperlinks that a web-based article can provide to direct the audience to resources like WrongPlanet. Printed newspapers don’t have the space to include many such links. On the web, readers can get as deep into a subject as the reporters who bring them the stories in the first place, and often the reader can choose to go even deeper. There is nothing new about this observation, but knowing that the tools exist, and seeing them used as effectively as Harmon used them in her piece, is not the same thing.
Finally, Monday’s story was not a one-time effort. The Times is covering the coming of age of this generation of autistic youth in a series that began in September. Like any good news web site these days, The Times provided links to its prior work on this topic, and it also invited readers to share their stories with journalists on the national desk.
Monday’s article struck me as a textbook example of modern enterprise reporting at its best. I don’t know Harmon, but I know she is not a run-of-the-mill reporter. She has won two Pulitzer Prizes, first as part of a 2001 team that explored race in America, and on her own in 2008 for “The DNA Age.”
Harmon focuses on the way science and technology affect the way we all live. I admire that sort of approach to one’s work, which shuns traditional boundaries such as “science reporter” or “lifestyles reporter.” It is interesting, and gratifying, to see a journalist who is so pragmatic in her approach and so adept with all the modern tools of her craft. Harmon is not a kid fresh out of school who learned to use a mouse before she could use a fork and knife, though she is not a graybeard of my generation, either. She is a veteran journalist who seems to have made it her business to get comfortable working with the new tools of her trade. We all should do our best to adapt to the times in which we live.
That includes me. I’m not getting rid of the dead-tree New York Times subscription just yet. It’s still adequate for telling me when Congress has passed the latest five-minute extension of a tax law, or who won last night’s ballgame (except if the game was on the West Coast or had a long rain delay). But when it comes to something I really want to know more about, I’m going to look at my newsprint paper a little differently from now on. I’m going to set it aside to go online and get, as the late commentator Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story.
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