Submitted by richardpendry on 4 December 2008 - 4:27pm

This is Matt Frei's prose poem on the financial cataclysm. I think this is wonderful writing to pictures, and both words and pictures have great rhythym: "the SUV, the large TV". Also, Frei is good with pauses: he lets the pictures breathe. Wonderful.
Scroll down on this page to "Rotten Roots of the Crunch" to locate this clip

Comments

TimLuckhurst

4 December 2008 - 7:00pm

Tremendous stuff, a master class in writing for television in one news package. My only criticism is that the BBC really should adopt the French habit of crediting the producer as well as the reporter. Excellence of that standard is rarely the work of one person and acknowledging it would not diminish Matt Frei's achievement. .  

richardpendry

5 December 2008 - 2:14pm

This was a double post; I can edit it but can't see how to delete. Can you help?

richardpendry

4 December 2008 - 11:54pm

Perhaps the editor deserves a credit too: it's nicely cut.

johnsaunders

4 December 2008 - 8:39pm

This guy on John Stewart's Daily Show, Calvin Trillin, has a new poetry-verse-song book about the US election. Not very similar to the poetry of Matt Frei, I admit, but you just put me in mind of it.

Tony Blair's appearance on the show was cringe-worthy. I'm not too keen on being lectured at by him on the forces of good and evil at work in the world today. Too bad for Yale students, I guess. He's split in two (by an advert-break rather than a chainsaw, sadly) here and here.

richardpendry

5 December 2008 - 2:34pm

Calvin Trillin is entertaining and I have to say that I found Blair quite watchable too. I noticed that Jon Stewart said that George Bush keeps turning down the Daily Show, so perhaps Blair deserves credit for putting himself in a situation where he had to field some tough questions.

Matt's got rhythym