One of the best-ever pieces of journalism ever written (well, at least in long-form style) is Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra has a cold.”
Talese, who had begun working on his masterpiece “Honor Thy Father” was assigned by his employer Esquire to go interview the Chairman of the Board himself about an upcoming biopic on the great man.
But, Sinatra somewhere along the line decided he didn’t want to promote the biopic, and conveniently got the sniffles at the time Talese was in LA to interview him.
Undaunted, Talese, complete with his stacks of shirt-cardboard note taking sheets tucked into the breast pockets of his immaculate jacket followed Sinatra around and interviewed people who were touched in some way by the entertainer’s orbit of followers.
What came out of the non-interview is, by Esquire’s estimation, one of their best ever articles:
a work of rigorously faithful fact enlivened with the kind of vivid storytelling that had previously been reserved for fiction.
You can (and should) read the piece here.