It's so much harder than it looks - to conjure a fictional world that some passing wolf of skepticism can't just blow down in one breath.

- William Finnegan

The differences between the received wisdom, the standard version of events, and the facts on the ground may be subtle or they may be stark, even pro…

- William Finnegan

It's completely different, for instance, to report on poor farmers in Africa than it is to report on, say, poor African-Americans. The familiarity of…

- William Finnegan

I remember surfing in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, even Madeira, when local fishermen had never seen a surfboard before, and refused to believe that we could …

- William Finnegan

Poor-country surf communities can be complex and, to some extent, leveling. The fisherman's kid is competing head to head with the plutocrat's gilded…

- William Finnegan

I need to conduct myself differently in different communities. In my experience, the journalistic conventions - you know, I'm the reporter, you're th…

- William Finnegan

There are big surfing communities in every country with an ocean coast that I know in Central and South America. Same with Mexico, Bali, and nearly e…

- William Finnegan

Speaking generally, I think it's useful to acknowledge explicitly the power imbalance between a journalist and the protagonists in a story about poor…

- William Finnegan

Hawaii is the birthplace of surfing, and many Hawaiians or part-Hawaiians surf, but in the rest of the United States it's a pretty white sport.

- William Finnegan