A teen, a plan, an essay: Chistmas in Baghdad for Hassan
So, Farris Hassan wants to be a journalist. More: he wants to be an immersion journalist, the kind of writer who fully enters the story he’s covering, risking becoming part of the story, and hoping to craft something fuller, with more texture, with greater narrative scope than traditional journalism. (Some traditional journalists are uncomfortable with immersive journalism because of the ethical issues raised in becoming part of the story. Recently, I blogged on Kurt Eichenwald’s story about teen pornographer Justin Berry, and Eichenwald crossed a fuzzy ethical line in traditional journalism by becoming part of and influencing the story itself, and he took some heat for it. But he did the right thing, and Eichenwald’s a big boy. He’s handling the criticism nicely.)
Problem is, Pine Crest private school student Farris Hassan is only
