HOW REPORTERS WORK

“The reporting process begins with two closely related actions – assignment by the editor and idea formation by the reporter. As soon as possible following the assignment, the reporter develops ideas for the story, and these direct the reporting.”
Reporters develop an idea or framework for their stories before and during their reporting. This preparation guides their observations and determines the questions they ask their sources. If a reporter’s observations or the statements of sources point in a different direction, the reporter adopts a new idea for the story. Reporters follow the facts. When the idea or framework is supported by facts, it becomes the lead of the story and the supporting facts becomes the body of the story.

Give Direction to Your Reporting
The reporting process is much like any other investigative process, whether it is conducted by a detective, a nuclear physicist or an historian. First, either support or refute the story. If the theory is not supported by the facts, the investigator develops a new theory.
Unlike the master detective, the reporter cannot spend hours in seclusion mulling over particles of evidence. The reporter sometimes has only minutes to prepare. Remarkable as it may seem, reporters develop the ability to generate useful ideas under pressure.
After the idea or framework is substantiated by reporting it becomes the lead of the story, and the supporting evidence – the observations, quotations and research – makes up the body of the story. This is the reason we are spending so much time on this concept. An understanding of the process of news reporting makes writing the news story easier.
Remember: The idea or framework is always tentative or experimental. It used to get the reporting moving. It used in the story only if the facts obtained in the reporting support the idea. The framework is only as strong as the beams and joints supplied by the reporting.

Story Essentials
The essentials are the writer’s starting point in all reporting. They determine the reporter’s early observations and the first questions asked of sources. One of the most frequent failings of beginning reporters is that they do not cover the essentials in their stories. In the newsroom, the editor will say that the writer has left a hole in his story, or that she has failed to anticipate and answer the reader’s questions.
Once the essentials are tucked away in the notebook, the reporter moves on to more specific and detailed observations and questions. The answer to the routine essential questions usually provide leads for more questions. In preparing – whether the preparation lasts a few minutes on a breaking story or a few hours for a profile of a lawyer – the reporter reviews the essentials, and may even jot down a few questions to ask. Also, the story assignment will set up ideas for observations and questions that move beyond the essentials.

Details Make the Difference
It is the details that make all stories unique. Solid reporting will dig up the details they make stories stand out. Details help the reader and listener to see and understand the event.

Good Reporting = Good Writing
Why is the second account so much better than the first? Only one reason – better reporting. This is what editors when they tell their reporters: You don’t write writing; you write reporting. No matter how proficient a news writer may become at manipulating words, there is only so much even the most gifted writer can do without good material to work with.

On the Beat
The heart of news gathering for the newspaper is the beat. Reporters are placed at strategic locations where news usually develops. These locations are designed as beats – the police station, the country courthouse, the city hall, the federal courthouse. The reporters assigned to these locations are called beat reporters.
Some reporters have topical rather than geographical beats. While the police and the city hall reporters spend most of their time at one location (a geographical beat), the educations reporter moves over a wide territory and examines a variety of topics of this subject (a topical beat). The education reporter visits grade schools, looks in on community colleges, attends school board sessions and even goes to the state capital to cover legislative session – that deal with educational matters. Other topical beats include medicine, science, labor, agriculture, politics, and the performing arts. Sports is considered a topical beat because most sports writers handle a variety of sports events.

Know the Subject Matter
Beat reporters are expected to have a thorough knowledge of the subject matter of their beats. This enables them to work quickly and accurately, whatever the deadline pressure. Their knowledge of how things work on their beats also enables reporters to do enterprise story. These are the stories that are dug up by the reporter’s own initiative.

Sources Are Essential
Good sources and persistence are essential. Sources provide tips and ideas, but not all of them lay out their information like merchants displaying their wares at a flea market. Some sources have to be pushed or praised and patted. Extracting information is an art. Usually, though, sources are cooperative.
A reporter cannot be everywhere on the beat. In the courthouse, where hundreds of transactions occur daily, the reporter who has good sources will be called by a lawyer who is about to file a request for an injunction. Or the court clerk will leave a call for the reporter to check with her about the injunction. A school principal will call the education reporter to invite her to look over a new reading program intended for the fourth grade.
Courtesy, a cheerful word or two and personal interest often are enough to make friends of potential sources. People on the fringes like to be thought to be close to those in power and to feel they are a part of important activities. They do this by feeding information to journalists. Sources also are essential for background stories. Every reporter has friends who can be counted on to explain the complexities of certain stories.

Five Keys to Covering the News Beat
1. Know how things work. Know the law that guide those in charge, the regulations and rules and the processes that underlie the daily activities of the agency, department or unit.
2. Cultivate sources. Good sources are not always those in charge. Secretaries, elevator operators, clerks, deputies, telephone operators can provide valuable information.
3. Keep abreast. Know what is happening in the field you are covering by reading good newspapers and specialized journals.
4. Be persistent. Dig beneath the handout and the press release. Do not take “no comment” for an answer from public officials.
5. Anticipate developments. Follow developments on the beat closely so that you have a sense of what logically must follow the present situation.

On the Beat
Beat reporters do most of the reporting on newspapers. The business reporter covers news construction, local business conditions and changes in company personnel. The sports reporter covers participatory sports activities such as fishing, hunting, bowling as well as the games and the athletic activities of local schools and professional teams. The education reporter covers campus and school activities such as student protests, changes in curriculum and personnel and school budgets.
General assignment reporters cover a wide range of news events. They are not assigned to a specific beat. Whereas the beat reporter has specific geographical or topical area, the general assignment reporter may be assigned to a speech at the Rotary luncheon, a housing development opening in the afternoon, and a landfill protest in the evening. Common to the beat and general assignment reporters are knowledge of the subject and the ability to write quickly and clearly under pressure.
Beat reporters face two dangers in dealing with sources: writing for them and getting to close to them. Sometimes, a reporter will become too technical. The sources will understand, but the average reader will be lost. Since reporters are in frequent touch with their sources and can only visualize their readers and listeners, the tendency often is to write for the sources. A more insidious pitfall is becoming to close to sources, so close that the reporter may be soft on his or her friends. A reporter also may not want to risk losing a good source by writing a tough story.

Checking A Source’s Credibility
- Previous reliability: Has this source proved accurate in the past?
- Confirmability: Is the source able to supply material that will confirm the information he or she is giving you?
- Proximity: Was the source in a position to know the facts he or she gave you?
- Motive: Is the source’s reason for giving you information logical?
- Contextually: Does the information fit with known facts?
- Believability: Does the source appear to be stable and rational?

Investigative Reporting
Investigative reporters seek to uncover material that people want to hide. Some of the activities are illegal, and some are legal but abusive. By abusive, we mean that activities in some way hurt people or deny them their rights. In recent years, investigative reporters have paid as much attention to the affairs of private industry and organizations as they did to governmental abuses and illegalities.
Investigative reporting is based on digging, the scrutiny of records, documents and files. Investigative reporters also rely on sources for tips and inside information. Although some reporters are assigned investigative reporting as a special beat, all reporters are expected do dig out information on their beats. The reporter who accepts without checking handouts and press releases and who relies on the assertions of authorities without checking them fails to inform readers and listeners of the full dimension of his or her beat. Such a reporter can never hope to do investigating reporting. Editors also want reporters who can do interpretative reporting and writing.

Interpretive Stories
The reporter who knows his or her beat, who has good sources and who can place current events in the context is often asked to write interpretive pieces. These articles, sometimes in the form of columns, sometimes called news analyses, give the causes and consequences of events. For instance, a writer might try to show how a city ordinance came into existence – the groups that pushed for it, the organizations that opposed it and lost and the reasons for their positions. The writer will also describe the effect of the new ordinance.
The term interpretive reporting means that the writer seeks to find the meaning of the event. This is not editorial writing. Editorial writers tell readers or listeners that something is good or bad. That is, they make value judgments. The interpretive news writer puts the event in its context. By placing an event in context, we mean that the interpretive writer’s job is to place the news event in the stream of cause and effect. An event that is isolated for a news story is plucked from a larger cycle or stream of related event. The interpretative story shows the news event to be part of a stream of events.

Aids and Impediments to Reporting
In making news, we have stressed the logical, thoughtful approach to reporting. We have talked about reporters adopting tentative ideas, then going out on the story to find supporting material. If the material is not there, the reporter adopts another idea. All of this makes the reporter seem cool and detached, dispassionately jotting down data from his or her observations, a scientist tracking electrons. Most journalists don’t work that way. Like everyone else, they have feelings, attitudes, and personal values. No one is exempt from these emotions, prejudices and biases. Some are positive and can reinforce good journalism.

Moral indignation
The persistent underlying sentiment of many investigative reporters is a sense of moral indignation. They want to make the world a better place, and they cannot abide the misuse and abuse of wealth and power that makes life painful and arduous for so many. No content with official statements, versions or excuses, reporters blessed – or afflicted – with moral indignation get things done. Although emotional involvement can lead to good stories, some feelings and attitude can distort observations and can blind the reporter to some kinds of stories.

Personal Biases
News reporting and writing is the art of selection. Reporters choose what they want to observe, and then select from those observations the elements they want to put into their stories. Many reporters do have strong political views, but they hold them in check. They realize that the complexities of life cannot be reduced to the simplistic absolutes of our young liberal and conservative. Some reporters are unaware of their biases, of the distorted pictures they carry around with them. We all grew up with images of things and people we like and dislike, of ideas we find admirable and those consider repulsive. Our parents, church or mosques, our friends, our school, our favorite television programs – all these and more influence us to see the world in certain ways. Journalists see these images, too, and sometimes they can distort a journalist’s perception.

Useless Baggage
The aspiring journalist should remember that no one, not even those who follow a credo that calls for an open mind, compassion and a commitment to democratic values, is exempt from the prejudice of time and place. One of the most difficult tasks young journalists face in freeing themselves from the weight of the past is establishing a proper attitude toward authority.
There is a middle road. The journalist must be skeptical of authority. An assertion Is not true simply because someone in power or an expert said so. The journalist’s task is to check statements, claims and declaration, no matter authoritative the source. Skepticism is not cynicism. It makes no sense to turn away from someone authority merely because the person has a credential or a title. An open mind, a broad outlook, association with all kinds of people and the realization that although people have much in common they are different – these are useful to counter the pictures in our heads that can distort reality.

Story Essential
Every story that a reporter writes can be fitted into a type or category. There are game stories that sports writers handle, fire and arrest stories police reporters write, meeting stories that a variety of beat and general assignment reporters cover and write. There are also news conferences, meeting, obituaries, accidents, crimes, weather and personals. Each of these types of events has essential ingredients or elements that must be included in the stories.
Here is what we mean by the essential elements of the news story. An obituary obviously must include the name or the person who died. Since the reader wants to know something about the person, every obituary must also include the person’s address or home town and his or her occupation and accomplishments. There are other absolute necessities for the obituary, one of which was left out of the following wire service story.

Non-negotiable Essentials
Journalists like to say that there are no rules for journalism. Since no event is quite like another event, there can be no rigid rules for writing stories. All events are different. Each should be handled with an individual touch, with full attention to its unique characteristics. However, every basketball game story must include the score, the names of the teams, the key plays and the names of the players scoring the most points. All accident stories tell the reader or listener the names of those injured, where the accident occurred, the names of the drivers involved and the cause.
To sum up, there are essential elements for every type of story and they must be included. They are non-negotiable. You can complain about being forced into a rigid style by these requirements all you want. These essential can be placed anywhere in the stories – in the lead, the middle, at the end. Placement is up to the news writer and his or her feel for the relative importance of the elements and the structure of the story.
Journalism is not mechanical. It cannot be carried out by the number, like a drill team automatically stepping out its patterns. Journalism is an art that requires it practitioners to look with a fresh eye at each event so that the unique aspects of the events can be captured in the story. But the eye must have a focus, a direction in which to begin looking. The essentials point the news writer in the proper directions.