It's in the eyes

The first thing you learn on the rescue squad is not to look into the victim's eyes. It "personalizes" them, makes them human and gets you feeling sorry, sad, mad at the accident and emotionally distracted. Looking into a person's eyes does a lot of things - and most of all it makes things after that intensely personal - particularly if they're in crisis. Look between the eyes, look at the forehead, but don't get caught in their gaze. It's deadly, you're told. You can't do your job if you're emotionally distraught. It's nothing personal - and keep it that way. And most do, be they cops, nurses, emergency room personnel or firefighters. They know the dance.

Journalists do the same. Feature writers WANT to look into the eyes. They want to connect. Want to write great feature articles? Spend as much time learning to look honestly and fearlessly into people's eyes as you do learning to craft a lead. Investigative reporters on the other hand - learn to study their notebooks, to look at their surroundings, to look between their subject's eyes. They don't want to see the human side unless it adds to the story. It's hard to ruin someone's life no matter how evil they've been, if you've connected with their eyes. The really good reporters can do that you know. They can look into the eyes, then back out again and do their job. They know the dance.

I learned well - maybe too well, not to look when it might be painful. When I first got the form asking if I wanted to submit my name for selection as a media witness to an execution I said "Yes, of course." After 22 years as a journalist there aren't many stories I haven't done. An execution is one of them. At that point I hadn't looked into Emmett's eyes and I sure didn't plan to.

I was working on the story first. In my mind I was thinking angles and leads and what I would say when I had to brief other reporters outside the prison afterward. I was doing my job. The "briefing others before filing my story," I was told, was part of being selected. Never, in my entire career as a journalist, have I been told to tell a competitor all I had witnessed before I filed my own story. Now I was being asked to and it ruffled me.

Then Al Tompkins, of Poynter.org responded to my email to him about that and said, "This is not a time to try to play the scoop game. You are about to see a human die - it is more than a newspaper story."

Indeed it is. And with that, I caught my first glimpse into Christopher Scott Emmett's eyes.

Before the day was over I would catch another....