7 Chapter 7: Reporting and Writing Skills

From Journalism 101: Libretext

Introduction

“If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

– Anonymous

That’s a funny line up there about your mother; though, maybe if you think about it too much, it moves from funny to kind of desperately sad. But that’s why it’s such a perfect quotation for this chapter on reporting. Because when you report a story, what you are really doing is hunting to find the honest truth. Not the cliché truth, or the popular wisdom, or the thing that someone said was true, but the real truth—frank, weird, ugly.

We shouldn’t even say your job is to “find” the truth, because that implies the true story is out there somewhere, intact and gift-wrapped with a pretty, little ribbon, waiting for you to “find” it and bring it home to the newsroom. Yes, the truth is sometimes like that. But, most of the time, it isn’t—it’s a lot messier, and it’s usually scattered around in bits and pieces. Furthermore, the truth changes over time, and it looks different from different angles.

So if you ever believed that fiction was the place for complex truths while journalism was the place for simpleminded chronicles of life’s surface, think again. Truth can be stranger than fiction. Indeed, truth is often stranger than fiction by far. And it’s not that easy to discover.

At the country’s big newspapers, the most experienced and talented reporters are called “Investigative Reporters,” and they tackle large and complex stories, often working in teams. But the title “Investigative Reporter” could rightly apply to every reporter at the paper—even the baby cubbies, even the student reporters—because reporting is essentially investigating. When you report a story, you work just like a private eye.

First you gather information, which is called “doing legwork,” and yes, you must use your legs to get out of the newsroom and dig around, see things for yourself, ask people questions, and track down documents. Of course it is possible to gather information on the Internet. But you can’t report a story from your desk, on your butt. You must learn things firsthand. And when your legwork is done, you must double back and verify everything you thought you knew to begin with or learned along the way. If your mother said she loves you, now’s the time you check it out.

And all the while that you are reporting, you must keep your mind supple enough to follow the story where it takes you—that is to say, your work is both physical (up you go, out the door) and intellectual. A story is a puzzle, and you are the investigator who must gather the pieces and fit them together, and you can’t squish the pieces where they don’t fit just because you want them to. That’s another way of saying what you already learned in the introduction to this part of the book: you mustn’t “steer” your story.

Instead, as you work, you might find your initial hunches were correct, but you might also find you were barking up the wrong tree entirely, and the story that is emerging is different than the one you thought you’d be writing. You must let that story emerge. Furthermore, you must be aware at all times of your own biases, and course-correct as you go, to keep the bias out of your way and out of your story.

Finally, you will be doing all this work against a deadline, and that pressure will help you concentrate, but it can also cause panic and mistakes. Thus, you must be constantly aware of the element of time, as you race against it to capture as much of the truth as you can find before you must stop reporting and start writing. The story may continue to unfold, but you can catch up with it the next day, in a follow-up story.

And how to do all this? To be perfectly honest, you will learn how to report a story only by going out and reporting one. For my first story at Columbia Journalism School, for example, I was sent to a polling place on Election Day. I was excited and eager and started interviewing voters. I walked right up to them in the polling place and asked whom they’d voted for and how they felt it was going out there, blah blah, and all at once a nice policeman came over to inform me that the press was not allowed within 100 feet of a polling place and I was most welcome to go to jail. I talked him out of that, but I was mortified and a little frightened. And you too will learn how to report a story only by bumbling your way through it a few times until you finally get the hang of the process. I’ll describe that process in the next section, but you won’t really register what it says; the information will lurk around blurrily in your mind’s eye until you go out on your first story. Then it will come into focus.

Let’s practice. Let’s report an imaginary story. Let’s look at the problem of teenage sexuality. Oh wait, there’s already a bias in that idea: who says teenage sexuality is a “problem”? For that matter, what the heck is “teenage sexuality”? Okay forget that story, it’s too fraught already. Let’s tackle something important. Let’s look at the parking situation at the hockey rink.

No, seriously, there is quite a bit of grumbling around town about how there aren’t enough parking spaces in the lot beside the hockey complex on the south edge of Andover’s campus. Maybe the problem is simply that there are two rinks there, which means lots and lots of skaters on the ice, most of whom aren’t Phillips Academy students (who would walk to the rinks); they’re young skaters, pee-wee hockey players (pee-wee skaters? Note to self: Find out what they are called) driven to the rink by parents who couldn’t carpool even if they wanted to because the skaters might be wee, but their gear isn’t, and you need pretty much an entire SUV to hold just one bagful of it, not to even mention the sticks.

So you must find out what’s going on here—what is the problem? And maybe it’s simply that the lot isn’t big enough for all those kids and their gear. Now this would be a nice news story: whoever designed and built the complex screwed up in a big way. On the other hand, maybe there is plenty of parking, it’s just that the primo spaces near the building are always filled, so the parents must lug those duffels a long way in the freezing cold. In which case, who could blame them for grumbling, but that’s a different story. Literally.

So you wander out there to see for yourself how many rinks there are (two), and how many kids on the ice (plenty, but lots of them are figure skaters—with tiny white skates! and tiny leggings!), and how many SUVs are parked out back, and where exactly they’re parked.

And you note that while all the spots are taken, no one has parked in the handicapped zone, no one has plowed onto the curb, no one’s idling in the circle waiting for a space. So tonight, anyway, there appear to be enough spaces, just exactly enough—unless someone has dropped off his kid and driven home, and will drive back after practice, which is quite the polluting way to raise the future Michelle Kwan and extremely irksome to the ferrying parent who is hardly out of the bloody car before he has to get back into it—but that’s another story, again. And indeed, maybe there’s no news story here after all—there seems to be enough parking—but maybe there’s a feature story here about the living hell of schlepping your kid endlessly to sports. So here’s what you have learned from this tale, and what you will study in the upcoming part of the book:

How to report a story: You will learn lots of techniques for reporting, but the basic idea is simple: Go To The Hockey Rink. You report a story by going out there (wherever “there” is) to learn for yourself what is happening. Talk to people. Listen. As you report a story and learn more and more about the truth of things, the story will evolve, often becoming very different from what you thought it was when you started.

Anyone can park herself at a computer, Google something or someone, and write a “story” about it. That’s not what journalists do, though; that is not reporting. Journalists unearth and gather information firsthand, make coherent sense of it, and verify it. That is what makes their work valuable.

How to write a story: When you write for a newspaper, your purpose is to tell your reader as much information as you can, quickly, clearly, and factually. Thus, you write news stories very differently from the way you write a novel or a short story. When you write fiction, YOU matter—you, the writer, the consciousness at work behind the words—and when people read your novel or short story, they commune with you, consciousness to consciousness, soul to soul. When you write for a newspaper, however, no one wants your consciousness or soul or anything else about you on the page. Particularly in a hard news story, you are simply the conduit for conveying information from the rink to the reader without interfering in any way; indeed, you want the reader to receive the information as if by an intravenous injection to the head. Thus, you write cleanly, concisely, but potently, selecting the right tone for the emotional register of each story. Writing a feature story about a mother balancing her checkbook behind the wheel of her Odyssey as she idles in front of the hockey rink, craving a cigarette her kids don’t know she ever used to smoke, you might choose the tone of humor. Or (if you want to earn an A in the course) a tone of profound sympathy.

Before you go out on that first story, memorize these 3 rules. You must:

1. Identify yourself as a reporter before you start talking to anybody about any aspect of a story. It is crucial that people know what they’re getting into when they talk to you or hand over documents—in person, or on the phone, or via email or fax. They need to understand that you are not interacting with them in the private realm, but that in fact you are going to share their words or information with other people—maybe thousands of other people. No one should interact with you in innocence of this, and if you allow people to think they’re dealing with you privately, you are deceiving them. In this business, you must never deceive your sources, your readers, or (frankly) yourself.
2. Verify what people say to you and don’t print a source’s quote if it isn’t true. I know this sounds obvious, but every year, one or two of my students include absurd quotes in their stories and then argue (really argue with me) that the quote belongs in the story because the source “truly” said it! When this happens, I cover my face with my hands. I rub my eyes. I watch the psychedelic colors behind my lids and breathe deeply. Then I say, “Yes, it is indeed true that someone gave you a quote, but it is not the journalist’s job to report that someone spoke. It is your job to report what they said. If what they said is true, print it. If not, don’t.” If you can’t find out whether it’s true or not, don’t print it, because if it turns out to be false, you will have made a mistake. If what they said is false and damaging, you will be sued for libel. More on that later in the book.
3. Never steer your story. In other words, don’t come to a conclusion about your story and then cherry pick facts to fit your conclusion. That’s not journalism, that’s propaganda, or spin. At Andover, the students are very fond of the staff workers in the dining hall. Many of the staff speak Spanish, and the students enjoy chatting with them in Spanish as the staff make their stir fry. There’s something nourishing for both the staff and the students when they interact this way, something more than lunch that passes between them. It’s friendship, or something like it; it’s connection—a bridge between the world of working adults and the very lucky students they serve. Recently, the dining hall at Andover underwent a major renovation. Many of the staff who had previously been serving students in the stir fry line were now working backstage in the new dining hall’s gleaming kitchens. The students missed the workers, and some students leaped to the conclusion that after the renovation, new fancy chefs were brought in—mostly white men the students hadn’t ever seen before—while the Spanish-speaking workers were relegated to lousy kitchen jobs. Editors at the school newspaper got wind of this and sent their reporters out to “get” the story that the new dining hall’s policies included demotions based on the staff’s ethnicity. Except the story wasn’t there, because the Spanish speaking staff, like all the staff, both new and old, had been invited to choose the tasks they’d like to perform in the new dining hall and were trained in those tasks. Some of the staff who were once in the stir fry line didn’t want to continue in stir fry—they preferred to work in catering, or in set up or clean up or food preparation. All the students had to do was ask them where they worked now and why, and the staff would’ve told them. The newspaper’s story focused primarily on the superficial count of Hispanic workers who were no longer out front serving students but were now invisible in the kitchen. The numbers were right, the facts were right, but the numbers carried implications of a policy, a vaguely racist policy, that didn’t exist. The story had been gummed together with facts chosen to create the impression the editors wanted to convey—not the story that actually existed.

Remember that when you are a reporter, you gather bits and pieces of information from here and there, and you wave a wand until (presto!) it becomes a little white dove that flies away on its little wings. Except, actually, you don’t wave a wand, and there is no presto! Instead, you piece together the story as well as you can, using lots of information from lots of sources combined with your judgment. And then you must ask yourself: Have you got it right? Did you make a dove? Or is it a crow? Does it have wings and feathers? Or did you patch together some unsightly thing that actually can’t even fly? A journalist’s work is difficult and can be subtle. You aren’t simply describing the surface of things, like someone capturing a moment with a camera; you aren’t simply giving your version of events, like someone writing an opinion blog. You are answering to a more complex requirement—you are being true to the story. You can’t steer it or dig up facts to fit into it. Instead, you must gather many facts and see what they honestly add up to. Then presto. You can write your story.

Reporting

“The three most important words in journalism: accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.” – Attributed to Joseph Pulitzer

Here’s how to report a story:

 

Identify the Stakeholders

Stakeholders in a story are the people—or governments, businesses, or organizations—with a significant interest in the story, who are in some way involved with or affected by it. Often, the stakeholders in a story are obvious, but sometimes, figuring out who they are takes a bit of legwork itself.

Once you make a list of stakeholders, make a real effort to interview them. It is lousy work to write that so-and-so—who is important to your story and who will care very much what it says—”could not be reached for comment.” Reach people. If the residents of a housing complex accuse their landlord of gross neglect, you need to talk to the landlord. If 500 people spent the night on the floor of Logan airport after their flights were canceled by Air France, you really have to call Air France. If a third grade class, inspired by Brangelina, collected a bazillion pennies to send to an impoverished school in Africa, put Brad and Angelina right on your stakeholder list. You might not reach them for an interview, but if you want a decent story, you had better call their agent and at least give it a try. Indeed, you must always pursue the stakeholders and never shy away just because they’re busy or famous or, for that matter, scary. Even if you know a stakeholder is likely to blow your head off in a shrieking tirade, you owe the maniac a call.

Note: Keep in mind that stakeholders by definition have an interest in your story and therefore likely also have a bias. If you ask them for more than just a comment—if you ask them for information—then you’re asking them to be your sources. And just as you would with any other source, you must evaluate their credibility and reliability. You do this by thinking through why they are talking to you, what they have to gain, or what they risk. This will help you figure out what their bias may be, so you aren’t manipulated or deceived.

Now, consider a moment in history when the American media was manipulated by a single stakeholder—the U.S. government. Watch the beginning of Buying the War, a PBS documentary about the compliant press in the lead-up to the Iraq War.

 

Gather Information from Sources

 

Legwork

Your first source should be, of course, yourself, as you go tearing out the door to unearth the story. There is no substitute for being there at the scene of a story and seeing things with your own eyes. This is how you get the facts right, and this is how you get the atmospherics that make a story come alive.

But before you fling yourself out there, you need to understand that journalists, like all other citizens, must follow the law. Journalists may go to public places—but not to private places—without permission. They may listen to a conversation in the street and report it, but they may not tape that conversation without the speakers’ consent; they may go to a crime scene, but they may not necessarily be allowed past the yellow tape (note the phrase “not necessarily”). Journalists do have the right to be at a crime scene, but they can’t impede rescue attempts or put themselves or others in danger. For a full list of your rights as a journalist, read and keep as a reference this Student Media Guide to News Gathering from the Student Press Law Center (SPLC), a non-profit organization devoted to the protection of scholastic press rights.

 

Documents

Documents are great sources because they’re usually straight with you: once you copy them or take their picture, you’ve got what you need. Of course they can be forged or doctored, but unless you think a stakeholder would resort to that, you can assume a document is a reliable source. The trick for success with documents is knowing which ones exist and which of those are legally available to the press. The Society of Professional Journalists has compiled an extensive list of public documents, called “The Journalist’s Toolbox: Public Records Archives” for you to examine.

If your request for a public document is denied, don’t be stopped in your tracks. Keep reporting by submitting a request for the document under the Freedom of Information Act. In the old days, submitting a request under FOI took forever! Journalists were on endless hold, waiting for the government to supply information that sometimes took weeks and months and, truth be told, years to be released. But the process is far more streamlined now, and FOI requests truly work.

 

The Media

Another source of information for reporters is the media itself. No newspaper wants to get its information secondhand, but neither can any newspaper afford to have a correspondent everywhere. Thus newspapers pay for subscriptions to wire services such as AP, UPI, and Reuters. They also rely on reports from other newspapers and from television and the web. Good newspapers will independently verify information from other media sources, especially when the information is breaking news. Never forget that it is quite easy to get information from other media that turns out to be untrue.

 

People

Most of the time, your sources will be people, and the way you approach them and engage with them will make all the difference in how well you do your job. When I am in the car with my kid, and a great song comes on, she often says, “Will you stop singing? And—(she sighs)—stop moving your head.” So, this is one method of communicating with me. Later in the day, the same child will sidle up to and say, “Ma…mee… (smile, snuggle) Can I take the car?” So in the morning, this child is a bit cranky, while in the afternoon, she is a sweet angel, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that in the afternoon, she wants something from me.

And you are going to want something from your sources—information—and therefore you are going to be very charming with them, as well you should be. But you also need to be professional with your sources and absolutely straight with them, so you do not mislead them or put yourself in a position to be misled.

 

Conduct the Interview

Here is the first rule of interviewing: The source should be talking, and you should be taking notes.

This seems self-evident, but it’s surprisingly easy to forget. The source, after all, is someone else, while you are you, the epicenter of the universe as you know it, the one who’s come up with clever questions, the one who’ll have a byline, the one who, frankly, has gained so much knowledge while preparing for this interview that the interviewee is going to be mightily impressed if he’d just shut up and listen. But he’s not supposed to be listening, he’s supposed to be talking, and even if you know the answers to your clever questions, you’re not the one who should answer them. If you simply can’t put yourself in such a powerless position, remember that once the interview’s over, it’s your show again and your story. How well you stifled your ego during the interview may well determine how well your story turns out in the end. What you want to do is get the source talking.

You should prepare for the interview by writing down your questions and reading them to yourself several times before you meet your source. If you’re looking strictly for information for a hard news story, then ask your questions and keep asking until you receive solid answers. (Note the superb interviewing techniques on display in News War by Frontline correspondent Lowell Bergman.) Try to not let the source get away with generalizations or evasions. If you want to know how much money your city is spending on a new park, you should get a number for an answer, not a disquisition on the benefits of greenery. Before you head back to the newsroom, check your written list of questions and be sure you asked them all. Also be sure you have the source’s name spelled correctly and an email or phone number so that you can contact him again should you realize, in the middle of writing your story on deadline, that you’ve forgotten a crucial fact (not that this has happened to me, ever).

If you’re working on a feature story, you don’t want to grill your source—you want to have what feels like a conversation. Ask a few questions from your list, and then stop thinking about the list and, instead, just listen closely to what your source is saying. Pay attention to her mood and body language, get a sense of how she feels, and ask your follow-up questions based on what she’s saying. Before you say goodbye, go back and look at the list of questions you wrote up in advance. Chances are you will have asked them all because you looked them over carefully before the interview started, so they were on your mind and thus you likely found a way to bring them into the “conversation.”

The second rule of interviewing is this: Get details, details, details.

A kid wearing a white shirt and slacks to his after-school job as a janitor is less interesting than a kid wearing a white shirt and slacks his mom ironed that morning. Details, details, details. And write them down or you’ll forget them. Use five spiral notebooks, if you must.

Here’s the third rule: Take notes.

If you meet a source in person, take notes in one of those cool reporter’s notebooks, and you might want to use your cell phone to record the conversation as well, but only if you ask the source for permission to use it; it’s illegal to tape someone without her permission. If you talk to a source on the phone, write or type as you listen. You can also tape the conversation, to be sure you have the quotes down properly, but, again, only if the source gives you permission.

Try to get the source’s words down exactly so you’ll have direct quotes in your notebook, and if you can’t write as fast as he’s talking, ask him to repeat what he said. If you get the direct quote, put quotation marks around it. If your source says something’s off the record, write “OFF” beside it. Be sure you’re careful with these things so you don’t get back to the newsroom and find you can’t decipher which words are the source’s and which are yours, and which ones were off the record. That would be a stomach-sinking kind of moment for you, especially if the source is now on a plane to Shanghai and unable to help you sort through your mess.