Out-Of-Class #1: What We Need To Do

Journalism isn't about writing. Rather, it's about reporting.

Writing -- or broadcasting, or creating a video, or blogging, or tweeting, or whatever -- is just the form in which we present the conclusions of what we discovered while reporting.

Many people in this class can write very well. But in too many stories there was an over-reliance on writing to cover up a lack of substantial reporting. And that meant many well-written papers were graded far more for being inadequately-reported stories.

Journalism is about exploration; that is, getting out and talking to a multitude of sources to really get a solid feel for what's actually out there, and not simply what you presume from the start.. It means finding and interviewing many people from a variety of sides of a story, as opposed to finding a handful of people to meet an arbitrary sourcing minimum and fill in the spaces between your presumptions.

We're supposed to be seeing if those presumptions are valid based on talking to many people, and not just finding people to match our presumptions.
 
In many stories, we had just one side of an issue. Maybe we just talked to officials in charge of something. Maybe we just talked to people affected by something. Maybe we just talked to neutral experts, who have no vested interest in how things turn out, but know a lot about the subject at hand.

What we need to do is talk to all such groups. Not just one, and not even just two of three. We need to explore all the levels of complexity of a story, and reach out to all the niche groups that have an interest in what is happening, is affected by what is happening, is in charge of what is happening, and is expect in what is happening.

For example, in a past story about businesses that profit from football games, we talked to a ton of businesses and got a bunch of good info on how spending goes way up on home game days. But we didn't talk to a single one of the spenders -- fans! If the story is about fan spending, shouldn't we talk not just to those who take the money, but those who give, too?
Plus, the story lacked any kind of a neutral expert, who would be able to more fully flesh out what the trends and patterns mean. And in a big-sports college town, I would think just about any business or econ professor would be able to talk on the subject expertly.

So, it should have been a story in three dimensions: one side (the money-takers), the other side (the money-spenders), and the neutral experts (money experts). But we told it in only one dimension. That's not fully exploring a subject, and that's not journalism, either.

To find such sources, we need to ask ourselves, who is interested in this? Who is affected by this? Who is in charge of this? Who is expert in this? And where might I find these people?

Then, we need to find them.

Google is your pal, sure. But it starts with your own curiosity, and your willingness to act upon it. You can't just race to the minimum three sources and think, I'm done. You're done when you've answered those aforementioned questions in italics; then interviewed all those people; and then answered all their questions.

Only then do you know what you have. Only then do you know what to write. Only then have you committed an act of journalism.

Another part of journalism is qualifying superlatives; that is, showing the audience data and facts and quotes from sources to support why something is the best or biggest or greatest or controversial or sad or outrageous.

For example, if you're writing about the Ice Cream Festival and you say it's the biggest yet, don't just say it, show it by offering attendance figures and ticket revenue and the number of vendors as compared to previous years so I can see the facts behind the conclusion.

If we're saying fans had a blast, let's quote more than a festival organizer who has a vested interest in saying his or her event was awesome; let's talk to participants -- plural -- and see what they think, and include many of their quotes so that the audience isn't just taking your word for it, or the word of someone with a bias; they're getting proof that the feeling was universal.

And if those sources contradict your original premise? Then follow the facts. Again, stories shouldn't be written based on presumptions; presumptions and conventional wisdom is our starting point for fact-testing those presumptions. In the end, we write what we write based on what we discovered.

Yet, some of us did so little interviewing it was hard to discover anything, other than a smattering of quotes that got only one side of a multiple-sided issue; or superficially plucked just one source from each category, without really seeing if others shared their views or not; or failed to contact neutral experts who could help contextualize what people were saying; or failed to have data that could show the audience without a doubt why something is so.

Worse yet, some of us seemed to take story slants not based on what sources on opposite sides and neutral experts were telling us; rather, we were expressing conventional wisdom without attribution, or making arguments for a side of an issue without attribution.

That may be fine writing, but without greater research and then writing to represent what you found, it's a great argument or opinion piece or debate argument or courtroom argument or even public relations. But it's not journalism.

We explore. We interview. We write based on what we find. And before we write, we need to do enough exploring where it's overwhelmingly clear based on our first-hand interviews what the angle should be.

All because we're great writers does not mean we'll automatically be great journalists. We need to be curious, and act on our curiosity by doing lots and lots of interviews from a broad array of sides. 

Plus, journalism is about substance, not style. In the rewrites, I don't want us to address just the stylistic and grammatical issues I brought up, and barely do any additional interviewing or data-gathering, if at all. While I appreciate a cleaned-up story, the failure to address areas of true substance -- more interviews, broader interviews, data to support generalizations that were being made -- will result in no grade changes at all for some folks between the original version and the rewrite.

If you answer questions substantially, it's fair to expect a substantial grade improvement. If you answer them superficially, then the needle won't move. Worse yet, in a professional environment the hope that questions posed by your editor will simply go away is not a strategy that will ensure continued employment.

Get into the habit of taking a deep breath, buckling down and addressing the issues I pose to you, in the same way an editor would. Hoping that I (or an editor) won't re-ask the question or forget that we asked it in the first place simply won't happen. You can't simply try to write around a hole in the story. We will find it, and we will demand the hole be filled in a substantial way: via additional reporting.

And, this isn't a term paper; this is journalism. There's a big difference. With a term paper, you find and cite the reporting and research that others have done, and put that in your paper. But in journalism, YOU do the actual reporting and research YOURSELF.

You don't cite CNN saying there was a bombing in Boston; YOU call the Boston authorities YOURSELF, and do YOUR OWN interviews to get the raw material that makes up your story. You don't cite a study done by Harvard University that you found online; YOU call the person who authored the study and interview him or her YOURSELF.

That means we don't simply cut and paste what we find online. We don't cite other media. We don't take things off of someone's Facebook page. Instead, we see the sources cited by what we find online or in other media or on social media, and then we directly contact and personally interview those sources ourselves.