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好記者學無止境 旁徵博引報導才精彩

There’s little doubt that the toughest job a reporter has to do is to write human interest or feature stories. It takes a good nose for news and the talent for making stories really interesting. Ultimately, it’s the test of a good news service correspondents, especially those posted abroad.

做新聞記者，最難的就是寫好特稿（或者寫有人情味的報導），這點大家應該都沒異議。首先，你得有獵犬一樣的嗅覺，可以找到好題材，然後，還要有本領把故事寫得生動吸引人。總的來說，特稿是辨別記者優劣的試金石，對海外特派員來說更是如此。

So I wish to take my hat off to Martin Fackler, who wrote for the New York Times a story of a remote Japanese village where farmers are able to paint interesting pictures on a paddy with their rice plants. It’s very well written, with an apt headline: “Japanese Village Creates Art Fro Hues of Rice.” A very good picture painted with rice plants went with the story. Shown in the picture are a warrior monk and a “samurai.” The only fault of the correspondent was his poorer caption. Well, I cannot blame him, for I am almost certain he doesn’t know enough about Japanese history or legend. The samurai in the picture wasn’t a samurai yet. He was the boy Ushiwakamaru, a younger brother of Yoritomo of the Minamoto who founded Japan ’s first bakufu or shogunate in Kamakura in 1192.