The Future

Tom Hallman's thoughts (thanks, Dan): Sam's story took two trips to Boston. Each day it ran on Page 1 and had two full pages in the A section, across four days. In addition to the logistical things about cost, you couldn't get that kind of space now. But good narrative doesn't have to take months to do.

I'm all for other media when it works, but the online component would have ruined that story. The power of the story doesn't come from talking to the doctors or having a graphic to show where the surgeons went in and how many procedures they did. Nobody cares about that—they care about the boy having a journey.

If we want to compete with other people in other media, if we just try to do it faster, it's a losing battle. The way we can define ourselves is by telling stories.