Essay by Allen Best
History – June 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
IN THE WRITING of history, as well as journalism, there are two prime commandments. Get your facts right, and make the story entertaining. Flub them and you’re a stiff. Score both and you’ve got a masterpiece.
Masterpieces are rare. Hollywood never has lost sleep over rearranging facts, the landscape, or anything else when putting together a movie. In the rush for immediacy at a daily newspaper, the most common form of journalism, both the narrative of the story and facts get trampled like jackrabbits on a winter highway.
