Feature Story

Michiko Kakutani is something of a mini-celebrity amongst New York Times subscribers and avid book readers from this city. Some would argue that she has reached Roger Ebert fame status. For three decades, her name was infamous amongst well-established writers, as well as revered by most novice authors.
This week, Vulture (a pop culture online magazine run by New York Magazine), publishes a short feature piece on the retired critic who has recently published a book of her own. It portrays a familiar picture of an old school new yorker that has chosen to remain in some sort of limbo between anonymity and recognition.
Since this is not a hard news story, it doesn’t need to follow the rather strict inverted pyramid structure required in those cases. The who, when and why are scattered across the article and it’s our job to find them. It starts with a seemingly trivial scene. Kakutani and the journalist are trying to find a Rolling Stones album. We learn a little bit about the subject and that small piece of information makes her closer to us, more familiar. In a way, it brings the Kakutani down from an imaginary ivory tower. Everybody likes the Rolling Stones.
A few lines down, we learn the real magnitude of her status and the power she wielded during her time as chief book critic of the Times. But even in her reclusiveness, we learn little tidbits of information that bring her closer to us. Her fondness for grilled cheese sandwiches, the fact that she kept books in her gas oven, and her Instagram habit that’s borderline obsessive remind us that she is a real person with rather mundane habits.
But the whole point of the feature piece is that we learn something of substance. Disguised, across the piece, we can find 3 different paragraphs that are directly related to her newly published book, The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump. This is the key takeaway from the piece, but to get to it, we have to go for a stroll across the city with Kakutani and the journalist. We have to share some intimate moments and pay attention to what’s being said directly and what’s in between the lines. We come across some information that might not be that useful, but in the end, we walk away with a key, having learned something else than just the bare minimum..

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