The pen is scarier than the laptop

by David Benjamin

“… With computers, students can type as fast as I speak and strive for verbatim transcripts, but there is almost no mental processing of the class’s content. Conversely, virtually no one can hand write 125 words per minute for 90 minutes. Thus, handwritten notes require simultaneous mental processing to determine the important points that need recording. This processing encodes the material in the brain differently and facilitates longer-term retention.”
—Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel

MADISON, Wis.—The musings of Ezekiel Emanuel in a recent New York Times op-ed about his decision to ban laptops in his University of Pennsylvania course on medical ethics and health policy warmed my Luddite cockles. More important, however, was Emanuel’s reference to studies that have found that manual note-taking creates a sort of muscle-memory communion between the hand and the mind not possible with the middleware of a keyboard.

Dr. Emanuel, like me, is old enough to have engaged in the necessary craft of note-taking—with pen or penci and a callused middle finger—before it was possible to do so on a portable computer or tablet—or lately, a smartphone. There was a time when “secretaries” were trained to take “dictation” in a phrase-based form called shorthand. Watching someone use shorthand is a remarkable blur of hand and stylus inscribing page upon page with mysterious glyphs that later translate into orderly “business English.”

Like most journalists of my era, who should have studied shorthand but didn’t, I had to invent a de facto shorthand and apply it legibly enough that I could comprehend what I had scrawled in a mad rush to quote my subject accurately. As Dr. Emanuel noted, no one can transcribe verbatim the swift flow of normal speech. In interviews, I typically abbreviate words, skip many altogether, leave remarks incomplete while catching up with the speaker’s continued flow.

A reporter’s notebook might well appear to anyone—or, sometimes, the reporter—to be little more than a broken trail of random syllables scrawled in a foreign language by a seven-year-old. Nonetheless, despite the chaos of my notebooks, I’ve never been accused of a misquote, for two reasons.

First, I’m fussy. When a remark is quoteworthy, my ears perk up and I concentrate on getting it all down. I’ll actually stop listening while I go back over the juicy quote, filling in missing words before they slip from my memory.

Second, when I don’t record a comment completely and can’t recover the exact words uttered, I don’t “quote” the speaker. I paraphrase, providing the gist of the remark without presenting it as gospel.

Methods like this, of course, don’t come naturally. I’m not even sure if they’re taught in the nation’s foremost journalism schools. Actually, I’ve never taken a “Journalism” course. I studied Comparative Literature. I backed into the news by working in my college public relations office, writing features and sports copy for local newspapers, one of which picked me up, by and by, as a “stringer.” As time went by, I ended up editing newspapers and magazines—which earned me a gig ghostwriting a book on inventions that required me to interview the chief executives (CEOs) of FedEx, Nike, Nautilus, Sony, Raytheon, etc.

Any veteran scribe will lament, of course, that picking the brain of a CEO is equivalent to conversing with your dog, but less expressive. Every corner-office exec in big business has been run through the media training mill. A CEO interview is a string of talking points that intimate the bigwig’s “transparency” while leaving the reporter with a mess of pottage. The antidote to this high-level charade is to grill the CEO’s underlings in a downward spiral. Secrets unavailable from a media-savvy boss can occasionally be milked from a lower-echelon minion unschooled in the devious charms of an ingratiating newshound.

Ingratiation is the canny reporter’s church key. Those ambush journalists you see depicted in movies and on TV—pouncing like jackals and demanding the Truth or Else from a mayor, a defense lawyer or a rape victim—are a caricature. A competent interviewer’s first mission is to get the subject to relax, often by mentioning a place, a hobby or activity, an experience they have in common.

“I read in Forbes that you were at the Global Veeblefetzer Forum in New Orleans when Katrina hit. I was there, too. I used to cover the veeblefetzer beat for Popular Mechanics!”

What a coincidence!

There’s no trust when a stranger interviews another stranger. But a veteran reporter can disguise muckraking as childlike curiosity. My wife, Hotlips, a better journalist than I, has feminine wiles sufficient to tame the savage breast of the Mighty Kong and walk away with the beast’s eye teeth and Fay Wray’s negligee.

Lately, Hotlips, like many reporters, is doing interviews with online subjects, backing up her manual notes by taping the dialog. But she still takes notes because depending solely on a recording device has two pitfalls. The first is that the machine might spin merrily away and record not one word. The other is tedium. Listening to a one-hour interview, pausing, rewinding and fast-forwarding to take notes, is gruntwork that adds little substance beyond what’s already scribbled down. Worst of all, this is all time that a reporter facing a deadline doesn’t have.

Most people have never interviewed anyone or been interviewed. Hence, most of us don’t understand how the presence or absence of that dog-eared spiral-bound notebook, and the pen in the interviewer’s hand, affect the psychodrama that’s unfolding between the contenders.

As we begin, I’m across from, say, VeebCorp CEO Vern V. Varney. We’re cordial. I ask how he’s doing. He’s fine. I tell him I’m fine, too. Then, I draw my notebook, I click my Bic. The atmosphere changes. Our relationship alters. Vern, although keeping a poker face and exuding charm, is now on guard. I ply him with questions and he responds with elliptical answers, my pen crawls along the page—but desultorily. I’m not getting anything close to candor. I keep eye contact while glancing at my notes often enough to keep them, at least, marginally legible.

But these aren’t serious notes because he’s not coughing up serious answers. So, I pocket my prepared questions. I follow up on one of Vern’s talking points. He has a talking point for the talking point. So, I press—in a a tone of friendly puzzlement—asking “What do you mean by that?” We’re sparring now.

Vern is watching my pen intently. When I start to scribble energetically, Vern tries not to look worried, wondering what he said. Did he reveal too much? Did he commit a gaffe that will resound throughout his industry, unnerve his board of directors and generate wisecracks at the country club?

Conversely, he might wonder why did I stop writing? Is he telling me stuff everybody already knows? Is he not newsworthy at all? Is he boring me?

I’m worried, too. At this rate, I could walk away from this shmuck with nothing. I might have traveled hours, spent money on airfares and hotels to score this interview, only to leave with a notebook full of evasions and boilerplate.

It’s time for the Columbo exit. We’ve all smiled at Lieutenant Columbo (Peter Falk), turning to leave the murder suspect, reaching for the doorknob, only to pause, tap his head and say, amiably, “Oh, just one more thing.”

The reporter’s version of this trick is to close the notebook, tuck away the pen, say thank you and make a little small talk—this, that, the weather, the quarterly earnings report, the semen stain on his assistant’s miniskirt. Yada yada.

None of this “post-interview” exchange is in the notebook. But Vern forgot to take this casual interlude “off the record.” The reporter has memorized what Vern said, word for word. As soon as he’s out the door, the reporter writes it all down.

Columbo has struck. It’s in the story.