For journalism class, I read Jim Blanchard's book, Winnipeg's Great War: A City Comes of Age, a 267-page book crammed full of details about how the war affected Winnipeg and its citizens.
First of all, I'll let you know I'm really not a history fan. So I likely didn't enjoy the book as much as others might. I'm also not from Winnipeg, so I don't think I was able to relate to the places/people in the book as much as others might have.
But I was able to appreciate the amount of work Blanchard put into the book. There is an extensive amount of details - from numbers to facts to quotes from newspapers, books and personal letters - which all help give readers an idea of the impact of war on a relatively new and growing city.
While I felt overwhelmed by the details as I was reading, I understand why they are there - if I were writing a paper on Winnipeg during the First World War, it would be an unbelievable source to use.
And though I did find the book had a few dry spells for me, a reader not too interested in numbers and names and random facts, the book also incorporated some really interesting personal stories, including the story of Alec Waugh, the son of a former Winnipeg mayor and a young soldier. Waugh kept returning throughout the course of the book, as did a few other characters.
However I would have really liked to see more of these interesting characters interspersed in the book. It would have helped it move along more like a narrative and provide a bit of relief from the details.
I also thought the ending was very well done. While I got lost in the first 200 pages and sometimes couldn't tell what I was to deduce from the long chapters, I thought the ending did a good job of summing up the emotional, economic and cultural change the war had on the city of Winnipeg.
I think what journalists can learn from this book is the power of weaving a story around really people. The real people were the most interesting part of this book - they provide readers with someone to empathize with and relate to. And while sometimes it's difficult to find a real person for your story on a tight deadline, it's worth trying.
Journalists can also learn that, while sometimes a lot of research goes into our stories, what matters isn't how much work we did and all that we found out, but what our audience wants to hear. What is most important to readers? How much information is too much and will overwhelm our readers? How much is necessary to accurately convey the story in a balanced manner?
I think John Hersey's Hiroshima did a better job of balancing necessary fact with the experiences of real people. It was easy to read and really engaged the reader with its six main characters, real people going through a very real tragedy. But I realize Blanchard did not have the luxury of interviewing Winnipeggers who experienced the First World War. I think it would be interesting to compare Hersey's work with a historical fiction account of Blanchard's book, where characters like Alec Waugh are brought to life through assumptions about their thoughts and actions (based on fact). I would much rather read something with a strong narrative pulling me through the book, but I think Blanchard did the best he could with the research resources he had available.
In our discussion with Blanchard, I was interested to hear that he conceded to the advice of his editor and cut some of the details from the book while it would have been hard for him to see all that work done for naught. I was also interested to learn that he uses hundreds and hundreds of recipe cards to keep all of his research organized - and that he wrote his first two drafts by hand. Staying organized is one of the hardest parts of collecting research, and now I see how recipe cards that can be sorted, reordered and laid out in front of you can be useful.
Overall, I think Winnipeg's Great War does contain a lot of valuable information about Winnipeg from 1914-1918, something I think needed to be documented well. For Winnipeg history buffs, the mix of fact with personal stories is likely the right combination for a great read.
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