Word: oney
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Oddly, though, Oney contends that "the prospects for racial harmony are better in the South than in any part of the country, [because] Blacks and whites are used to living with each other. They're much closer than they are in the North." As evidence, he points out that his native Atlanta features a Black mayor and a Black chief of police, and recalls that former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young, who is also Black, hails from Atlanta, too. After several weeks in Boston, he believes that the Hub "is as racist a place as you'll find anywhere...
...stories Oney prefers to focus on--including the Atlanta slayings and Leary pieces--are examples of the "New Journalism" he so greatly admires. His work aims to present people as they really are, a goal made immeasurably easier, he says, by the absence of daily deadlines and by the magazine format of the Atlanta Weekly. During his five years there, he interviewed people as diverse as California Angels' manager Gene Mauch ("a very strange and interesting man ... he's liable to do anything, really"), former Georgia Sen. Herman Talmadge (defeated last fall), and Billy Carter. Laughing, Oney remembers quoting Carter...
Turning from memories to current concerns, Oney denounces the conservative backlash against innovative "new journalists" in the wake of the Janet Cooke incident earlier this year. Cooke, he suspects, "fell prey to the highly competitive scene at the Washington Post." But, he adds, conservative editors are over-reacting by calling for "the death of the new journalists"--people who Oney says enhance journalism by "using the full complement of techniques writers can use to make a point" The soft-spoken Oney does not appear to get perturbed often, but he is more biting than usual when discussing those who would...
...prospect of being a journalist first excited Oney in the early 1970's, when he read the writings of men like Tom Wolfe. Wolfe argued that in contemporary journalism, one could write on current events with the novelist's attention to craft. The discovery that journalism need not be dry "was kind of a mind-blower for me," Oney recalls. Besides, "I didn't want to be an English teacher--which is about the only other option for an English major unless you work for Bell Telephone or something...
...Nieman program stipulates that its 11 journalists not write for publication during their years at Harvard, an attempt to "instill the notion that we're not here to write stories or to put out, but to take in and suckle at this great academic breast." Toward that end, Oney plans to attend classes ranging from art and music to psychology and economics. Whether this will leave him time to learn "to write news stories that read like short stories" remains unclear, but Oney is confident. You may see his novel sooner than you think...