It was around 2 a.m. on a long drive back to Kansas from California when Pulitzer Prize-winning report David Finkel knew he was done reporting his book.
He had just sent his wife a text message: “I’ll explain later, how bad is it to drink human urine?”
Finkel spoke about what it’s like to do the type of deep reporting he does, the obligations of reporters and why it matters to be accurate on even the smallest of details to an audience of about 200 people Monday night in Franklin Hall.
Finkel was invited as a guest lecturer to talk about his book, “Thank You for Your Service,” which follows American soldiers who have returned from the Iraq War and the difficulties they face as they adjust to civilian life. Many of the soldiers he wrote about struggle with mental health issues and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Finkel was invited to speak to the class C204: Behind the Prize, which brings award-winning journalists from around the world to IU to speak about their work.
Finkel practices immersion reporting, where a reporter follows a subject for an extended period of time and observes what happens to them.
He was in the backseat of the car with the two main characters of his book, Adam Schumann and his wife, Saskia, driving back to their home in Kansas after Adam was finished with a mental health program in California.
After Finkel fell asleep late at night, Schumann didn’t want to pull the car over to use the bathroom for fear of waking him.
Instead, Schumann urinated in a plastic water bottle and kept driving. When Finkel woke up, thirsty and feeling around for a water bottle, disaster struck.
Speaking to the crowd, many of them journalism students, Finkel’s lecture started out on a humorous note, but he had much to say about the importance of getting his story right. For his previous book, “The Good Soldiers,” Finkel spent months reporting on an infantry battalion in Baghdad.
“If you’re serious about this, I’m not saying don’t be afraid, because I got afraid,” Finkel said. “I’m such a believer in stories. Stories matter, and to me, true stories matter.”
Finkel said he always begins working on stories with an illuminating question in mind. For “Thank You for Your Service,” he began by asking what becomes of someone when they come home from war.
In order to answer that question, you have to get up, go somewhere, and see what happens, even though you don’t know what’s going to happen, Finkel said.
Finkel followed the lives of a few of the soldiers he had previously reported on while they were deployed.
To get their stories right, he had to go through some of the darkest moments of his subjects lives with them.
“It has to be bulletproof,” Finkel said. “It has to be reporting. It can’t be assumptions.”
Finkel wasn’t there the day Schumann tried to kill himself. Despite this, he had to go over every detail of the experience with Schumann and his wife to make sure he had the story straight.
“The goal here isn’t just sadness. Sadness is a really easy move in journalism. The goal is honesty.”
