Slug & Lede

Twins Bill and Jeff Haines have run their own barbershop since 1961 but now that they are planning on retiring, the shop is going to close.  Spokesmanreview.com created a video about the pair and their shop.

The video was just under three minutes long but did an amazing job showing the shop as a quaint reminder of the past that will no longer be around in this new era.  With the sound of a razor buzzing lightly in the background, their story unfolds about how this inseparable  pair has run their shop over the years and made friends within the Lincoln Heights community.  It displayed the amiable nature between the Haines and their clients.  And seeing the various customers talk about struggling to find a new barber after the shop closes was so moving that it served to reinforce the idea that the closing of this one small shop will truly be a loss in the community. 

The one major problem I had was the difficulty in figuring out just where this shop was located.  It was mentioned as a part of Lincoln Heights community but the name is common enough to exist in several different states.  Fortunately, the comments below the video list the location as Spokane.

 Mary M. Cullen

“Last Call”

            Spokesman-Review’s “Last Call for Haircuts” was a very cutesy human interest story.  It used video to capture the passive essence of the twin brothers that ran their community-renowned barber shop for the past 45 years. 

            The highlights of this video story for me were the interviews with the customers.  Both the older man that claimed “he got the haircut he asked for” and the young boy who explained the tradition the barbershop had become for him and his father were very engaging.  The interviews also represented the complete spectrum of customers that came through the door of the Haines brothers’ shop. 

Although the story was heartwarming and unique, I don’t know if I think that video was the best medium for it.  For instance, there were several long pauses, which although endearing, were more or less dead air time, with one of the twins at a loss for words while he cut a patron’s hair.  Despite seeming truly genuine and humble, neither brother, which was impossible to determine which brother was which, was extremely engaging with the camera or audience.  Their dryness on camera translated into a dryness for the video story, leaving the audience intrigued by the title and idea behind the story, but somewhat uninterested once they tuned in.

I think possibly a more appropriate medium for the story would have been print journalism.  If written as a feature in a magazine or newspaper, such as a feature by the New York Times, the story could have allotted space for pictures of the brothers in their shop, along with photos and quotes from the different customers.  I think a well-written feature could have actually been livelier than the video, because certain points, like the sounds of the old cash register in the background or the response of one of the customers after he was shown his new cut could have been highlighted and used to liven the story.  I also think that print would have allowed for a clearer message for the story.  Guided by the pen of the journalist, the readers would have been able to better follow the uniqueness of the establishment being lost in the Lincoln Heights community.  Left to nothing but few words from the brothers and shots of shears and an antique register, the video audience was forced (although not always a bad thing) to make the majority of the conclusions about the shop, the effect its closing will have on the community and the fate of the twins and the shop’s patrons, on their own.  Overall, I feel that print journalism would have been a better fit for this particular story because the writer would have been able to create a more lively, structured story, while still conveying the spirit of the Lincoln Heights Barber Shop and the people involved with it.