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Author Interview

Manny Cristosomo

The Weight

Sacramento Bee

Author Comments on "The Weight":

[We asked Manny Crisostomo for background on his story, particularly on what it was like to be photographer, videographer and writer on the series. He starts with some personal history:]

I fell in love with journalism when I was 17, as a summer intern reporter at the Pacific Daily News (PDN), a Gannett newspaper on the island of Guam. My editors were nurturing and patient with my writing and reporting, willing to trade my shortcomings for my enthusiasm. As a freshman at the University of Guam I gave up thoughts of being a CPA, changed my major to Mass Communications, got on staff at the campus newspaper and worked weekends at the PDN as a cop reporter.

The following summer my newfound vocation was derailed by a new editor who bluntly told me I wasn't good enough. That summer I took a job in the photo department, filing negatives and photographic prints. I can still remember wandering into the newsroom, envious of reporters pecking away at their IBM Selectrics, cutting and pasting their text and yelling "copy."

I returned to the photo lab and, impressionable youth that I was, quickly soaked in everything photography. My subsequent career as a photojournalist has been rewarding—and has covered many a rent and child support payment the last few decades. But something kept gnawing at me.

Thirty summers later, Sacramento Bee executive editor Rick Rodriguez gave me a shot at redemption when he agreed to my project proposal and my desire to do the photography, the multimedia and the writing for it.

A few months later, I walked onto the campus of the Academy of the Sierras (AOS), the nation's first boarding school for obese teens, with two digital Nikons and four lenses, a high definition digital video camera, an audio compact flash recorder and several notebooks. Throughout the school year I collected hundreds of hours of video and audio interviews. These tapes and audio files not only served as multimedia components but also the backbone for the writing that followed. During interviews and school events I juggled video taping, audio recording and taking notes. Oh, and I also had to take pictures.

As the months passed, I got to know most of the 70 plus students at the AOS and decided to focus on three teens, Annya, Jahcobie and Ricci. The reporting got easier; all I had to figure out was balancing chunks of time when I would either be shooting, video taping or just hanging around picking up details and taking notes.

I also took advantage of the three-and-half hour drive from Sacramento to the school's campus in Reedley, south of Fresno. On the drive down I would listen to audio pod-casts I had downloaded the night before. I'd listen and learn about making audio recordings, editing video and writing. On the drive back to Sacramento I listened to the most recent audio interviews from the students or staff at AOS.

By then, thanks to projects editor Amy Pyle and my writing coach, Bee columnist Steve Wiegand, my mantra was move the story along.

Things I learned along the way:

• The world doesn't revolve around photographers, and reporters really do a lot of work.
  
  Sometimes my best pictures are just that—a single image that embodies strong composition, a quality of light and shadows, a telling and decisive moment. I found that the touchstones and epiphanies that make for good character development and story-telling don't always translate to great visual images. By the same token I found that powerful video clips trumped my writing and photographic efforts.
  
  Even with the tons of material I collected, I struggled a lot with the writing. But one well-crafted sentence easily made up for hours of banging my head on the computer monitor. A page of paragraphs that "worked" overcame days of insecurity. I guess reporters really do work.

• Nothing beats good old-fashioned reporting.
  
  I found my natural curiosity and my willingness to ask questions and to listen served me well in my multi-faceted capacity as photojournalist, reporter or videographer.

• Cutting is easier if you've got something to gain.
  
  After weeks of discussing the story and going over the outline, Steve Wiegand told me to go off and write and write and write. I returned with a 90-inch draft of the first installment and a 100-inch draft of the second.
  
  We talked about what worked and what we could lose and then he sent me off to cut both days in half. I told him I'd get it to him before the weekend and he said, if you get it to me by then you're an idiot savant."
  
  I sent him the new drafts with the cuts that Friday. I reveled in being an idiot savant for a few days before I let him in on my secret.
  
  "Steve, cutting the story in half leaves room for more pictures," I said. "Did you forget who was the photographer on this project?"

Post Script: I'm still trying to find the Pacific Daily News editor who scarred my writing career thirty years ago.

Manny Crisostomo joined The Sacramento Bee's photo department in August 2002 as a senior photographer. His last photo project, on the final wave of Hmong refugees, won the 2005 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for International Photography.

Before coming to the Bee, Crisostomo spent a year teaching photojournalism and design at San Francisco State University. He began his career at the Pacific Daily News, first as an intern reporter and then as a photographer. He graduated with a degree in photojournalism from the University of Missouri and landed a job at The Detroit Free Press in 1982.

During his stint at the Free Press, he won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize in feature photography for his yearlong documentary of an inner-city high school.

In 1991, Crisostomo took a sabbatical and returned to his native Guam to document the island and the Chamoru people in a coffee-table book, "Legacy of Guam: I Kustumbren Chamoru."

He has published three other books: "Mainstreet: Small Town Michigan," "Moving Pictures: A Look at Detroit From High Atop the People Mover" and "Guam From the Heavens."