A Crooked Line (The Perils and Rewards of a Life in Freelance Journalism)

Behind the scenes of a globe-spanning career in freelance journalism

A Crooked Line celebrates an age when print journalism changed lives and made the world a better place. That era may be winding down, but this perceptive book makes the case for why incisive writing will always matter.

Over the course of his 40-year career, Michael Shapiro has reported from more than 20 countries, writing for National Geographic, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and many other top publications. But the itinerant writer’s life, while rewarding, has never been easy. 
 
Shapiro worked as an investigative reporter and staff writer for San Francisco Bay Area newspapers before letting go of a regular paycheck and setting out to share stories of people and places worldwide. The exhilarations of the open road, “afoot and light-hearted” as Whitman wrote, were tempered by the challenges of freelancing, from making a living to working with heavy-handed editors.
 
His stories put people first: For a feature about Puerto Rico’s recovery after Hurricane Maria, he visited farmers who spoke of shifting from exporting produce to growing food for local people. His profile of a Yosemite photographer, who climbed Half Dome after being diagnosed with cancer, brought the man’s big-hearted humanity to the fore. 

Shapiro is known as a travel writer, but his work goes far beyond global dispatches. In this book he shares stories of:

• saving Sunset magazine’s priceless archive of Western life (including photos made by Ansel Adams) after Time Inc. told staffers to toss everything into a dumpster
• an investigation into the U.S. government’s attempt to conceal the circumstances of pro football star and soldier Pat Tillman’s death during the war in Afghanistan
• writing a tribute about environmental hero Jane Goodall just hours after she died
• how the Grateful Dead’s ecstatic songs celebrate the wonders of nature.

Several chapters cover themes familiar to journalists and others who work for themselves. Among them: collaboration, independence, rejection and compensation. A glossary defines insider journalism terms such as hed, dek, slug, lede, nut graf, and kill fee. 
 
Renowned for his books of conversations with writers and artists, A Sense of Place and The Creative Spark, Shapiro has interviewed David Sedaris, Amy Tan, Smokey Robinson, Joan Rivers, Frances Mayes and Peter Matthiessen. In this volume, he tells the story of how he convinced a reluctant Paul Theroux to agree to an interview and shares an in-depth dialogue with poet and philosopher David Whyte.

Getting an interview and executing it well is the work of a diplomat, and there aren't many people who can do it. Shapiro is a pro at it—which this book shows.

A Crooked Line highlights Shapiro’s best journalism and includes behind-the-scenes anecdotes about how he pitched stories and got assignments worldwide. Postscripts detail what happened afterward; some include letters from people he wrote about, sharing what his coverage meant to them. 

After his story about Welsh bard Dylan Thomas was published in The Washington Post, Shapiro received a handwritten letter from a former customs official who said he had admitted Thomas into the United States on the fateful 1953 trip from which the poet would never return. Months after the Yosemite photographer succumbed to cancer, his widow wrote a heartfelt email to Shapiro telling him that his writing made her feel she was “spending time with Kirk again.”
 
Due to the dramatic changes in the journalistic landscape, a career like Shapiro’s couldn’t begin today. Yet the skills he honed as a journalist—empathetic listening, concise and evocative writing, and a keen sense of what matters—remain as relevant as ever. The tales and insights in A Crooked Line provide a timely affirmation of journalism’s enduring power to illuminate the human experience. This penetrating book reminds us that whatever life path we choose, it’s vital to make it our own.