I agree with the point you make, Larry: writers should strive from the evidence to get it right. Where facts are in dispute you say so. No one wants to err. You may offer an opinion weighted from decades of experience. Readers expect it from those of demonstrated competence over the years.
The integrity of your contributions is familiar from my 10 years on the board. You report from producible evidence, your experience, more a journalistic narrative than the story-telling of Corbett, Capstick and Bell. Their genre is first-person nonfiction without a way to confirm veracity.
Your reporting differs from storytelling. A cottage on our property is the birthplace of the legendary Jim Bowie, according to the local historical society. It is not although strong circumstantial evidence suggests Scottish cousins, one who remained in the US and the other loyal to the Crown.
Martha Gellhorn's reporting is more interesting to me than Hemingway's storytelling (and he of the famous turtleneck portrait hanging from the wall eight feet behind me, Karsh's print No. 2). When they covered the same stories there was truth in Gellhorn.
I think readers cut a lot of slack for our hunting storytellers. That's what I was referring to, the storytelling. Their job is to entertain with stories of their and others' experiences. Do we care if it took two or three shots to bring the monster down, or that an arm was torn off a porter instead of his head?
