How to become a better reporter, writer? Start here

If you read this -- Roy Peter Clark has brought back around his 1979 assessment of why Richard Ben Cramer was so damn good -- you will see, in Clark's list of Cramer's qualities, everything you need to be good at and be better at in order to become the best reporter and writer you can be.

You could write a book about this, as many people have. And there are a lot of good ones out there. But sometimes it helps to see it broken down like this, succinctly. After that it's up to you and me.

Journalists in Newtown: The human story

Visual journalist Chris Dunn brought this magnet back
 for her editor, Eileen Joyce. It's on the side of Eileen's desk,
 and is a visual connection of the YDR's newsroom to Newtown.

The York Daily Record has sent several staffers to Newtown, Conn. to help the New Haven Register cover the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting there. They've encountered some anti-media sentiment, but, as they have approached their difficult jobs with sensitivity and humanity, they have also found a welcoming community.

 And they have written about their experiences:

• Reporter Lauren Boyer, in "Four days in Newtown: Reporting on the Sandy Hook school shooting," writes in part about the biggest thing she learned: 

All too often, I take the “get-in, get-out” approach to journalism.
I get it done, crank out the story, and move onto the next thing.
I don’t ask people about their days or their plans for the holidays.
But you have to in a situation like this. You have to be kind, be human.
You have to show a genuine interest in the things people are saying and put the notepad away. Tell them you wish it never happened.

• Visual journalist Chris Dunn, in "An unexpected journey: Reporting in Newtown, Conn.," wrote in part:

I’ve been back in York for a full day now, and normalcy is not a thing yet. I went into work today to do some paperwork and participate in the holiday potluck and secret Santa gift exchange, but it all felt strange and foreign. Jeff and I are planning a weekend trip to Philadelphia — which had been our original plan for last weekend — and I mean to bake Christmas cookies, but it’s hard for me to focus on anything.
And yet, I was there for only four full days. I neither knew nor met any of the victims’ families. I never set foot inside a funeral service or wake, and I met only one person who personally knew a victim.
How or whether the people of Newtown and Sandy Hook will fully heal, I’m not sure. But I can say this: It is a strong, close-knit community, and even in a time of immense sorrow, the people are among the kindest, most polite I have ever met.

• Reporter John Hilton, in "A reporter in Newtown: Everywhere we turn, we meet 'gracious souls'," wrote in part:

I started Wednesday covering Sandy Hook Principal Dawn Hochsprung’s wake. The anxiety quickly disappeared after the first two people I interviewed thanked me for covering the story.
Everywhere we turn, my colleagues and I are confronted by gracious souls. Last night, one of the cleaning women at our hotel thanked YDR reporter Rebecca LeFever for her efforts. A psychologist staying here offered her services if anyone on staff needed grief counseling.

There is much more insight in each of these posts. All of them are well worth your time.

What I learned: Erin McCracken on difficult conversations

Third take on what our staffers learned from pieces they worked on that recently won Keystone Awards. Erin McCracken won first place in the feature story category for Fighting to conceive, about an obese couple trying to have a child. From Erin:

I learned to navigate uncomfortable conversations. I had to ask the Flickingers about their weight, menstrual cycles, sexual history, etc. At times, they were hesitant to answer. But at our first meeting, we agreed on why the story mattered: It might help the Flickingers find a solution and/or help others with similar struggles. When things got dicey, I reminded them about that goal to shift their focus from what they were sharing to why they were sharing it. 

Great advice to anyone who struggles -- and if you're in this business, you inevitably will -- to help people feel  comfortable, or at least willing, to share the kind of sensitive, personal information that resonates with readers. Anyone else have any success stories like Erin's?

What I learned: Sean Adkins on roadblocks

Second installment from our staff's Keystone Award winners on what they learned. Business reporter Sean Adkins was part of a team that won first place in investigative reporting for "Are we ready?" -- a look at evacuation plans, and their weak spots, for Three Mile Island and Peach Bottom nuclear power plants.

One of the most difficult tasks in telling a good story is weaving hard facts together with a strong narrative. Even more challenging is to persuade sources to give you important information amid the backdrop of a national story.
     We started reporting the "Are We Ready?" package weeks after the Fukushima disaster in Japan.  Initially, my nuclear sources were quick to point out that such a crisis befalling either Three Mile Island or Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station was remote.
      Once those interviews were in my notebook, those same sources appeared a bit skittish about speaking any further on the subject.  My guess is that they were simply waiting for that particular news cycle to expire.
   In one case, a source took issue with the fact that I reported, at the time, emergency sirens surrounding one of the nuclear-powered plants did not have a battery back-up. That source questioned why I hadn't focused on the most positive aspects of a recent meeting that found favor with the plant's operating record.
    The information about sirens made it into the "Are We Ready" package.
    Would my source have been more accepting of my reporting/questions if Fukushima had not taken place?   I don't know.  Maybe.

As I recall, Sean (and Teresa Boeckel and Bill Landauer, the other reporters on the project) kept going back to sources until they got what they needed. Persistence pays.

What I learned: John Clayton on trust

 The York Daily Record/Sunday News won 22 Keystone Awards in judging announced Thursday; many of those were writing/reporting awards, and by many different staffers.


I asked those staffers if they'd tell me, in 50-75 words, something they learned about storytelling (or generally about writing or photography/visual work) as they worked on the piece that was honored; or how they are trying to be better storytellers now than they were a year ago.


I'll share them on the blog as they come in with the hope that they create a kind of online roundtable about what we can learn from doing great work.


 Here's sports reporter John Clayton. He won first place in the sports story category for Stand strong, a profile of William Penn football player Anderson Novalin, who grew up in Haiti.

To me, this story reinforced the importance of trust. Anderson had seen some awful things in Haiti -- dead bodies, people being killed, etc. -- and he had to trust me before he was going to share them. I had to put in time ... Anderson was pretty shy during our first sit down. But over time he opened up, and I was able to get the important events/scenes that made the story work.

 An excellent point about earning the trust of the person you're working with to help make a story deep and true. Anyone else have a similar experience to share?

Writing about the intersection of one person and a big issue

Excellent interview on Nieman Storyboard with the Washington Post's Eli Saslow, who discusses how he writes about "people who are otherwise not known, but they're intersecting with something at an important moment." For example, his piece on what the federal budget debate meant to a family in Wisconsin.

He also talks about self-editing, working with an editor, story ideas, reporting, and keeping himself out of the story.

Knowing the way to the end

Freaking cool story by Ben Montgomery of the St. Petersburg Times on a diver who went missing in a deep and dangerous cave, the people who looked for him, and what happened ... and what didn't happen.

The ending knocked my socks off, and it made me think of two things:

One, he didn't suddenly discover that ending as he wrote the last few grafs of the story.

Two, he didn't just tack on the ending when he felt like he was about near the end of the story.

I'm betting he knew where he was going from the start, and wrote with that destination in mind the whole way. And that's why it's such a great ending -- it's a nifty line or three, to be sure, but its power derives from everything that comes before it, everything that he reported, how he prepared/organized the story, and every choice he made as he wrote it.

Thoughts?

Want to step outside your comfort zone as a writer?

Hopefully your answer was a loud "Yes!" (Even if you were just talking to yourself.)

Here are some thoughts on how to do that from the New York Times' Frank Bruni, via an e-mail exchange with Poynter.org.

A highlight:

 Journalistic training and preparedness are what they are, whether one is trying to be versatile or narrow. Read, read, read. Keep your eyes peeled for what’s interesting in the world. Pay close attention to the people you’re interviewing. Try to write up the results in a careful and lively fashion.

On profiles

Notes from yesterday's video session with Jacqui on profiles:

• They bring personality into the newspaper; most readers learn about a subject better if it's attached to a person.
• Profiles demand great interviewing; require journalists to observe (describe people and place, set characters in a place)
• You have to report well around the person so when you characterize or explain motivation, you have it nailed down
• Doing profiles teaches responsibility; you have to have it right

Key types of profiles

• Nano-profiles -- a way to build character into a story even if the story is not all about the person. You bring someone to life in a paragraph or two; tell us about someone's character or values in the moment.
• Cradle-current profiles -- seldom as necessary as we think they are. negatives are that they take too long to do, take up a lot of space and often read like resumes. Strive to do profiles as internal resumes rather than external ones.
  
• Niche profile -- develop who a person is at a key point in time. Pick the defining moments in their life (not their whole life); your profile then gets much more narrow. Many profiles spend too much time on back story; condense the resume stuff to a couple grafs in a story or into a box. Get dialogue, not quotes, to reveal someone's essence.
  

Tips for interviewing for profiles

• Props are helpful. Get people to tell you the stories behind things in their office or their home. Look for things they can tell you about, instead of getting them to answer direct questions.
• Use storyteller questions to put people into the timeline of their own life. Where were you when this huge event happened? Tell me about the day. When did you get up? What did you wear that day? What did you eat for breakfast? And so on. You want to build scenes.
• When you ask those questions -- say, what did you eat for breakfast -- ask more to get greater detail (what kind of cereal? in what kind of bowl? did you drink the milk out of the bowl after you were done? and so on.)
  

Timeline reporting technique

• Build two, maybe three timelines: One, the classic resume of the person; two, the defining moments in that person's life; three, what's going on in culture or society that provides the backdrop to the person you're profiling. Use those to build your story.

A little more later.

Virtual handout on reporting/writing profiles

Hey all, Jacqui sent an edited version of a presentation on profiles that she gave at the Nieman Narrative conference in 2003.

For those who missed our video session with her today, I'll blog on it Tuesday. But the doc she sent along covers a chunk of what she talked about today.

Covering what some consider the 'fringe' demands our best

This story hit home with me. It's not a great narrative, or even a great feature story. It's The Washington Post's ombudsman explaining why he thinks the paper was doing its job when it did a takeout on one of the most visible leaders of the "Birther" movement.

The Post caught flack for story because many people -- readers (and journalists, too, I'm sure) -- think the "Birther" people are wackos, and giving them ink gives them credibility, and giving them credibility is wrong and could even be dangerous.

We caught the same kind of flack a couple weeks ago when we put a Twitter gadget online to pull in tweets from an anti-health-bill rally in D.C.

"why are you covering this like it's a legitimate story?" AdamBeck5 asked. I responded (on behalf of the YDR account): "There were York County voices in a national debate about a huge issue that might be resolved in a couple of days. Seemed timely."

The Twitter widget is its own animal; it's basically just a ticker of opinions and thoughts on a particular topic. But I think it's critical for us to remember that, when we report on controversial issues, people or organizations, we ask questions that need to be asked and answered, and we tell stories about why people are acting in the way they are. If we do those stories well -- if we have context, if the tone is right, if we aim to shed light on the issue and the actors -- we are doing our job.

In fact, in a way, we are doing the best work we can possibly do. People are doing things, trying to accomplish things -- why? what does it mean? who agrees with them? who opposes them? What does this tell us about our society and culture?

Sometimes we assess a policy stance or a line of thought or a course of action -- e.g., the "Birther" movement -- as being so off the charts that to treat it seriously is to undercut ourselves as serious journalists. My argument here is that we do exactly the opposite; we make ourselves indispensable.

The key is to get it right. And to do that, the reporting has to be deep; the writing must tell a true story, keeping spin and lies out; and the piece must not have, as its goal, to discredit its subjects. And to do all that, we have to shed the idea that we're wasting our time on a fringe element that we shouldn't be "legitimizing." We are, in fact, doing good journalism.

Time-waster ... or maybe something more

Don't know if any of you have fooled around with Scribd, a site where you can upload your own documents, read or download documents from others and do social networking/sharing stuff. But if you're in one of those web-surfing moods where you're just poking around at different sites, check it out.

I put a couple things on there from brown baggers I've done. Apparently a more than a few people have found them. Also, on Scribd, you can subscribe to others so their docs show up in your feed. This morning, I discovered I have a subscriber from Italy and one from Spain. Can't imagine how they found me, or that they're all that interested in the YDR's narrative writing efforts, but anyway, it's cool.

Some people also publish fiction on the site.

The other thing about Scribd is it could be useful as a way to discover sources (or information or leads) for stories. It's searchable, so you can plug in whatever term you're dealing with and see if something useful comes up.

When it's not your fault

A few years ago, we had interns in Washington, D.C. through a deal with Medill News Service (under the auspices of Northwestern U.'s j-school). We had one each semester, resulting in quite a few different bylines.

Lauren Fitzpatrick was one of the best, if not the best, Medill correspondents we had. I remember her as curious, smart, a good bullshit detector, pretty much fearless, and able to find good storylines in the often grinding, plodding world of the federal government.

She's now at the Southtown Star in Chicago (been there for a while, actually, I believe) and is in the middle of a media controversy of sorts: She wrote a story about a tragic event; a local TV station lifted her story and re-ran it, but made errors in the process; and when the family got mad, they got mad not at the TV station but at Lauren.

The Chicago Reader has now written about this, and I call your attention to it not just because it's an interesting story about journalists and their jobs, but because I love how Lauren is handling the situation and what she says about doing what we all know can be a really tough job sometimes.

Thinking about story structure (and story, period)

To emphasize a point Jacqui made early in her session on Wednesday:

A lot of you have her handout on story structures (and those who don't, I still have some, so grab one off my desk or just ask me for one).

You could certainly look through that and find it formulaic and less than inspiring, toss it aside and decide to wing it with story structure. But as Jacqui noted when she was talking to Ted (who used to work for Gannett) about a rigid story structure Gannett used to use, "the value is not so much the rigid box but what it is they're trying to get us to think about."

Take a few minutes to look over the structures in Jacqui's handout. Then back it up -- begin to connect them with how you'd report; how you'd think about questions to ask before you went out to report; how you'd think about possible angles for a story and sources/questions that might inform your reporting; and how you think about story ideas.

When you start to look at it that way, it starts to fit together, and you start to see how having a "blueprint," as Jacqui calls these structures, can really help you get the most out of your reporting and writing.

Little things add up to big things

Here's a Washington Post narrative piece on the Metro train that crashed, focusing on a handful of passengers and built around a last-one-on, last-one-off structure.

There are a lot of things to take from this story, but here's one that struck me: The detail of the guy walking from the front of the car to the back. It happens early in the story. The writer notes that this guy was all about protecting his personal time, and being in the back of the car put him closer to where he wanted to go when he left the train. "That seemed important," the story says. And it was, as you'll find out.

But the reporting tool to take from this is: Clearly, the reporter asked the guy to recreate everything he did on the train. When the guy said he walked from the front to back, the reporter had to have asked, "Why did you do that?" And the guy must have answered, to save time. How much time? the reporter might have asked? A few seconds, the guy may have answered.

But the reporter didn't stop there. He/she must gone on to a Metro train and paced it off -- allowing him/her to give you the info that, basically, nine seconds made the difference for this guy.

For a narrative, no question is too small, no answer insignificant. You need everything you can get, because only when you have that can you truly take someone through the crucial scenes in your story (or, in this case, the entire story).

Further thoughts on the redesign, narrative, and data-heavy stories

Brad sent out a thorough, helpful note about our upcoming redesign and what it's intended to accomplish. Some of the language of his note -- particularly about narrative and data-heavy stories -- may have been a little confusing. He and I just talked about this, and we're on the same page, and I wanted to add some (hopefully) clarifying thoughts here.

This line -- 'The problem is that many stories fail when they try to deliver too many numbers, dates or facts in narrative form.' -- is not talking about true narrative; it's referring to more traditional news and feature stories. Narrative, as we know from our work here, is its own thing, with its own set of reporting and writing requirements and skills. It's not something we do a lot of, because it takes time and effort to do it right.

That's not to say that we shouldn't consider even true narrative in alternate forms. (We've pointed out some on this blog over the past couple years -- here, here and here to pick a few). But the focus on alt-story forms is more to re-think our approach to some of the more routine daily stories that we do, the quick turnaround types that are common and thus can be overlooked or passed off as boring by readers.

My second thought also grows out of the same sentence noted above, regarding 'numbers, dates or facts.' We're not talking about banning investigative pieces, or declaring that no one can ever write a budget story again because budget stories have to be in alt-story form.

What Brad is trying to get across is: Let's approach those types of stories to see how they can best be told. If a budget story is better told visually than in 18 inches of text with a breakout, let's do it. If the enterprise piece can benefit from a large graphic that can deliver some of the newsy stuff -- thus potentially giving the reporter a bit of elbow room to write his or her investigative discovery with the needed context and depth -- let's pursue that.

And, actually, this is all stuff that we're already doing. The redesign is an opportunity to reach some new levels of planning, thinking, focusing and executing stories and story elements.

If you want a great example, look at this past Sunday's paper and Teresa's earthquake story.

As Brad noted (in an e-mail to me earlier today), Teresa reported the hell out of that story to provide the content for the graphic as well as the elements (2 short stories -- including one alt-form -- and a breakout). Teresa, Carrie and Brad took what could have been a traditional 60-inch enterprise piece and created an informative work of art on the front page. That was the approach to the story from the beginning.

In that case, that approach really worked. In another, the choice might be different. The key is to keep applying this kind of thinking into our work -- what's the best way to tell this story? -- as we go forward.

Golden sources in narrative

Pat Abdalla flagged this story from espn.com that recounts the events leading up to the car accident that killed a young California Angels (sorry, I'm not calling them by their legal name) pitcher named Nick Adenhart.

Pat noticed with interest that the reporter used text-messages and Facebook updates as sources.

The story starts with a scene at the hospital after Adenhart has been pronounced dead; then goes back to 12 hours before the crash, and works its way forward as a narrative. The Facebook and text updates quoted certainly help drive the narrative and give the story specifics it might not otherwise have.

We've talked at different times about those "golden sources" for true narratives -- somebody's journal, an official entry log of events, a videotape of an event from which action can be described -- and you can certainly add Facebook updates, Twitter, text-messaging, all that stuff. The key is to verify that the posts actually were made by the person you're writing about. Once you have that confirmation, you have a valuable source for your story.

Update: Videoconference workshops with Jacqui

We're solidifying the schedule and topics for the storytelling workshops with Jacqui Banaszynski, as well as some baggers Amy and I are going to do. Check the left rail under 'Coming up' for dates, times, presenter and topic.

Note that the first two are:

April 8, 4:30 p.m. -- Amy on the writing process and "forensic editing."

April 22, noon -- Jacqui on a deeper look at focusing and organizing, and how a conversation between reporter and editor can help.

We've set this up to be an integrated year-long schedule of workshops aimed at practical reporting/writing/editing skills: Amy or I will do a bagger; the following month, Jacqui's video workshop will drill deeper on some aspect of what Amy or I talked about. We've staggered the times between noon and 4:30 to give those who work early or late a chance to be in at least two sessions with Jacqui.

Jacqui's goal, she said in an e-mail as we were working on this, is to "provide real tools on very focused topics" so that you'll leave the session with concrete and practical things you can apply to your work.

It's gonna be great stuff, an opportunity few newsrooms will have.

As always, if there are some specific things you'd like covered in these sessions, let me know and we'll try to work them in.

A quick way to better interviewing

Wanted to let everyone know that we're working on firming up the schedule for Jacqui Banaszynski's video workshops, and Amy and I are planning our own baggers to complement Jacqui's and take us through most or all aspects of the reporting/writing/editing process during the year. Stay tuned ...

Meanwhile, I was going through the notes I took at Poynter's Newspaper Writing & Editing seminar in 1997, and came across this from Jacqui, who was talking about some functional things to do to make stories better.

She referred to the "Banaszynski beer rule": Take your story idea to someone other than your assigning editor. Ask them, if you could have a beer with the person I'm writing about and could ask them anything, what would you want to know?

A small but good thing to remember as you're interviewing & reporting.

More on Jacqui

You'll be hearing more about Jacqui Banaszynski in the weeks to come, leading up to the videoconference seminars she'll do for our newsroom.

But a couple quick things:

-Her bio is on the left rail of this blog.

-She has her own tag, also on the left rail. Click on it to see blog entries relating to her. The one titled "Inspiration" will give you a pretty good idea of the kind of passion you're in for later this year.

-She won a Pulitzer in feature writing in 1988 for "Aids in the Heartland." Here it is.