Poetry is important. And the hope for this standing feature of The Protojournalist is that by searching for a poetic nugget in the constant rush of news we can slow down for a moment and contemplate what the news story really means.
Like finding a lovely pebble in a mountain stream. Or a dropped earring on a crowded sidewalk.
Haiku in the News — you can find other examples here — is not designed to be a trivial thing.
Gray Lady Poems
For a while now, The New York Times has been doing its own version of haiku in the news — using a computer program to highlight 17-syllable samplings in its own journalistic prose. Some work as haiku; some don't.
Here is an example from a recent story on the Pakistani practice of donating sacrificial animal hides to charities:
In previous years,
People have been killed in gun
Battles over hides.
"How does our algorithm work?" writes Jacob Harris, the newspaper's senior software architect. "It periodically checks the New York Times home page for newly published articles. Then it scans each sentence looking for potential haikus by using an electronic dictionary containing syllable counts."
By Humans, For Humans
The NPR version, on the other hand, is human-based. We depend on people — using real eyes and real ears and real sensibilities — to point out poesy overlooked in the 24/7 information onslaught.
Today's haiku comes from Philippe Monfiston, 30, of Monroe, N.Y., who listens to member station WNYC. Philippe unearthed this three-line treasure on NPR's website — in our own backyard.
Yesterday there were
Lots of police cars, so I
Didn't take the risk.
-- A woman who has driven a car in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, despite a government ban on women driving, according to a recent Reuters report.
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(If you find examples of Haiku in the News, please send them to: protojournalist@npr.org. You could win a Protojournalist Prizepak.)
The Protojournalist: A sandbox for reportorial innovation. @NPRtpj
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