WHEN WIL HAYGOOD WAS IN 10TH GRADE, he was cut from the junior varsity basketball team. The next day, he went to the locker room, got dressed, and ran out onto the court.
“To me there is always a story behind the story, as old fashioned as that sounds.”The other players glanced awkwardly, aware that Haygood’s name was not on the list taped outside Coach Guiler’s office. Before the coach could utter a word, Haygood blurted out, “Coach, I know I’m not supposed to be here. I know I didn’t make the team, but all I’m asking is for a chance.”
The coach, surprised and caught a little off guard by Haygood’s bravado, allowed him to practice and before the season’s end, he was one of the starting five.
This would not be the last time Haygood put himself on the offensive and won.
Now 45 and a staff writer at The Boston Globe for the past 15 years, Haygood’s persistence has paid off. An author with three books to his credit, his journalistic journey has thrust him into the middle of a violent inferno in Los Angeles, carried him into the depths of an AIDS epidemic in Africa, and brought him face to face with the King of Soul himself, James Brown.
And with each article, Haygood went after the story with the same determination that landed him on the basketball team years ago. He will not take “No” for an answer.
“If I have a story I want to do and a particular editor doesn’t think it’s the proper story idea for him or her, I’ll go to another editor,” he said. “I’ll pitch the same story and knock on all of the doors.”
THE MORNING AFTER RIOTS EXPLODED in Los Angeles, Haygood was on a 6:30 a.m. flight out of Boston.
“Something just itched in me to be in the middle of the action,” Haygood said. “I woke up at 3:30 that morning, packed my stuff, and headed to the airport without talking to anyone at the newspaper. I wanted to do the story so badly that I felt I didn’t have time to wait for people to get to the newsroom.”
Boston Globe Editor Jack Driscoll received a call at home from Haygood, who was at the airport gate.
“He was a bit surprised, but very encouraging,” recalled Haygood. “He just told me to be safe.”
In 1988, soul superstar James Brown was jailed on assault and weapons charges after leading police on a high-speed interstate chase. The media was not supposed to have access to Brown in prison.
But Haygood, accompanied by Brown’s lawyer, landed an exclusive interview in 1989 with the “Godfather of Soul” inside prison. Instead of running with the scoop, Haygood took another week combing tiny southern towns in Georgia and South Carolina for Brown’s backup singers.
“To me there is always a story behind the story, as old fashioned as that sounds,” he said. “James Brown, in jail, suddenly put all these people in limbo. And nobody had ever gone to talk to them. That becomes the story of James Brown.”
This is not to say that Haygood’s stories lack essential news elements. In long narratives, he said, the ones that are successful need news as the backbone to the drama.
The search for James Brown’s backup singers “was a grueling trip,” Haygood said. “But every 100 miles or so, I learned something. And it made the story so much richer.”
Haygood shared his gung-ho approach to reporting and writing during the News and Non-fiction Narrative seminar, a five-day course held at The Poynter Institute last November.
“In writing, the calling has to be bigger than the dream,” he told seminar participants, referring to the romanticized perception of writers as creative geniuses who lead Hollywood lifestyles. In reality, he later expounded, writers face many challenges in their pursuits of stories.
“Writing is physical work. It’s sweaty work,” he said. “You just can’t will yourself to become a good writer. You really have to work at it.”
Part Two on Tuesday: An in-depth look at Wil Haygood’s reporting and writing methods.
