Black Hawk Down author speaks to La Salle students about journalism

By Liz Wagner
Collegian Editor
March 19, 2008

Mark Bowden leans back on the desk he is sitting on as he addresses the class in front of him. His face, though becoming lined with age, still retains a boyish, dare-me quality. His eyes are bright with the need for challenge.

“I always thought, ‘I should be working on something that I’m not sure I can handle,’” he says to the class, and judging by the look on his face, you can tell that he means it.

 Even if Bowden’s name isn’t familiar to you, his 29-part journalism piece-made-novel-made-movie Black Hawk Down probably is.

The 2001 release recounted the story of 100 Army Rangers sent into Somalia on a mission that become trapped in the city of Mogadishu Oct 3, 1993.

Bowden became interested in journalism in high school, and it was in the 1970s that he encountered the blend of storytelling and journalism known as literary or “new” journalism. His interest in this style of writing followed him through his time at Loyola College in Maryland, and stayed with him when he was hired by the Philadelphia Inquirer and moved to Philly in 1979.

Within a year at the Inquirer, Bowden was sent to Africa to write a series about the poaching of the black rhino. He then wrote several more in-depth pieces that received mixed feelings from his editors.

“I was often going off my beat for stories,” Bowden said. His editors were not pleased, and a few times Bowden thought he was going to be fired.

But even with his lucky breaks, Black Hawk Down is a story that Bowden almost didn’t have the opportunity to tell. In fact, as he was pitching his idea in vain to his editors, he was working on a series for the paper about Marble Township, a small community that was considered ideal for its quaint atmosphere.

What he really wanted to write was a piece about the soldiers and their fateful experience in the Somali firefight. He began to gather information on his own without waiting for the consent of his editors. He had never seen literary journalism used to write about combat before, and he thought this tactic would make for an excellent story.

But immediately after he began the search for information, Bowden ran into trouble. When he called the Pentagon to ask for contact information for the surviving soldiers, the officials said that he must provide a list of names of the soldiers he wished to speak to in order to gain access to their records. Obviously, this was going to be an ordeal.

However, when Bowden was sent on assignment to write a profile of President Bill Clinton, he found himself at a meeting with the families who had lost sons in Somalia. He spoke to the parents at this meeting and met the father of Jamie Smith, a man who warmed to Bowden immediately. When Smith learned of Bowden’s intentions of writing a story about the battle, he was more than willing to help Bowden find some answers. Smith, in truth, did not even know specifically how his son had died in Somalia.

From there Bowden accumulated names and took a trip to Fort Benning, where he painstakingly interviewed several soldiers stationed there under the watchful eye of a media affairs man, then took his new name trail of former soldiers and continued with his story.

However, it wasn’t until his editors at the Inquire thought he was considering a job with the New York Times that he finally got the official OK to do his story. Some more research and a trip to Somalia later, his story was ready to print.

When Knight Ridder, the company that owns the Inquire, tried to contest Bowden’s rights to sell the movie rights for the story, Bowden’s editor came to his rescue and said the two had an agreement that the story’s rights were not owned by the paper. And the rest you can find in your local movie store.

Bowden now writes full time, and is content with his accomplishments.

“My goal when interviewing someone is to understand,” said Bowden.

And with a determined look like his, it is easy to see he won’t stop interviewing or writing anytime soon.

wagnere1@lasalle.edu