By Alecia Swasy
St. Petersburg Times
Remarks delivered to the Newspaper Reporting, Writing, and Editing: Covering the Beat seminar at The Poynter Institute on March 4, 2003.
Chip asked me to dig into the archives to revisit my days as a beat reporter at the Wall Street Journal.
Let me give you some quick background: On day one, my bureau chief took me to lunch and said: "I have good news and bad news. The good news is we want you to cover Procter & Gamble.''
The Journal had just started the Marketplace page and wanted more stories about consumer marketing. P&G is the biggest marketer in the U.S., outspending all other firms on advertising. And its products are found in 98 percent of all households.
So what's the bad news, I asked. "Procter's nickname is the Kremlin. Go get 'em.''
So I spent the next five years digging in. I dug in a bit too much by P&G's standards. My work prompted the company to get Cincinnati law enforcement to whip up a grand jury subpoena for my phone records to see who was leaking information to me. Thankfully, we found about that and wrote a page one story on Procter's gross abuse of power. William Safire of The New York Times likened it to Watergate. And Fortune magazine dubbed it one of the biggest business blunders of the year.
I wrote a book about P&G called "Soap Opera: The Inside Story of Procter & Gamble," which chronicled how the company has sold dangerous products that killed women, destroyed a Florida river, and terrorized their own employees.
What I hope to share with you today is some of my lessons learned from that experience, plus what I've learned from my time as an editor here at the St. Petersburg Times. And we'll talk about what beat reporters need from their editors.
Lessons Learned
1. Do your homework. I was at a huge disadvantage when I started covering P&G. I only knew that the company made Tide and Crest. So I read everything I could find. It's a lot easier now, given the Internet. Trade magazines are great resources. For me, it was Advertising Age and other marketing journals. They focus on minutia, but serve as a useful tip sheet. Part of the homework is learning the lingo. It's much easier to get people to talk if you can understand their jargon. Every organization, whether it's city hall or a corporation, has its share of inside baseball. Imagine if someone parachuted into our newsrooms and heard us talking about nut grafs or dummy type. Same goes with whatever you're covering.
Get on mailing lists for everything. Read obscure publications. Some of my funniest orphans -- those short brites -- came from my sister who has a dairy farm. She found an article in Hoardes Dairymen about researchers milking mice to study genetically engineered milk. Made for a great little brite. My other sister told me about an Amish farmer who sold the cattle to start an emu farm. The Journal loves farm animal stories.
2. Sources. When you're first starting to cover a beat, you have to get out and meet the players. My first interview with Ed Artzt, the CEO of P&G, nicknamed the Prince of Darkness, was quite memorable. He looked across the desk at me and said: "How old are you?'' My response: "I'm 25.'' He replied: "You've got a pretty big job for a kid. You should be proud of yourself.''
Over the years, Ed proved to be a good source, when he wasn't pissed off.
Once you've met people, you have to constantly check the trap lines. I'd go to Cincinnati on a regular basis and linger an extra day or so to meet more people. Eventually, I got copies of the company newsletter and other goodies. Newsletters are great sources of new people, especially recent retirees. They still talk to their old pals, secretaries, and have lots of time to talk.
I think one thing that helps when cultivating sources is to convey that you're serious about telling the story, getting it right and they can help. It also helps, frankly, that I can laugh at myself. I actually showed up to an interview once without a pen. Talk about disarming!
It also helps to do interviews face to face. As one reporter said to me: "It's a lot harder to kick you out of an office than it is to hang up the phone.''
Granted, I had a good travel budget and a supportive bureau chief who understood my need for time. But you can do it on a lean budget, too. One message you must take home to your editors is the importance of time. Bill Blundell, the wonderful writing coach at the Journal, wrote in his book that we should all be out to lunch, sharing an interesting chardonnay with someone new. Instead, we all go to lunch with each other. I'm not sure we can get away with the wine, but he's right. The only exception: have lunch with your editors. It's valuable one on one time. And she's likely to pick up the tab, too
3. My third lesson is what I call: "No, I'm really not stalking you.'' This is based on the time when we were trying to break the story that Procter was buying a chunk of Revlon's business. Ed Artzt wasn't calling me back. I learned that after a certain hour, usually around 5:30, he answered his own phone. It helped to learn about his other corporate ties. He sat on other boards, so it was easy to track him down.
For instance, I knew that on certain days each month, he flew to Boston for a board meeting. So when we were chasing the Revlon story, I called directory assistance and asked for the top five hotels in Boston. I called each one and asked if Mr. Artzt had arrived. Bingo. He was due at the Ritz Carlton. So I told my bureau chief: "Trust me on this. I know where he is tomorrow.'' She said: "Go.''
I sat in the lobby for four hours waiting on him. It was such a Kodak moment when he walked in. He did a triple take and yelled: "Jesus Christ! What the hell are you doing here.'' I said: "You wouldn't return my calls so I figured I'd pay you a visit.''
One of my favorite phone calls was to the Pebble Beach resort when Ed and his board were meeting for their annual retreat. One of his senior executives had resigned, a highly unusual thing to happen at Procter. Most people left only when carried out feet first in a box. It's an employee-for-life place. So I called and Ruth Artzt answered. She was most helpful about passing along the message to her husband. He called, rather ticked off cause he was on the golf course. "How did you find me?'' he steamed. "Well, you register under your own name, Ed.''
I asked him about the exec who resigned. He denied it. But this guy wasn't registered at the resort. "Shouldn't he be at the meeting with you?''
That really pissed him off. That conversation was when he launched the company's investigation into my phone records.
Some other key things on your beat: where does the mayor work out? Is the school board president a member of the yacht club? Where do they go on their annual junkets? Find out any social, charitable ties. Read the society news, get those YMCA newsletters. Anything that mentions the big shots. Also, remember to collect plenty of home numbers, cellphone numbers, and email addresses -- more than just the daytime contact info.
4. Know birthdays, pets, all sorts of trivia. One of our reporters carries a tiny notebook in her purse to jot down which city hall officials have kids in baseball, soccer, etc. I found out Ed Artzt's birthday is April 15th, so I made him some birthday confetti out of a shredded 1040 form. One thing to remember: powerful people aren't always nice, so most of their employees don't bother with personal touches.
5. Be nice to gatekeepers. I cringe if I hear reporters being rude with secretaries. You're not getting past them unless you are civil. Ditto with public relations people. I have less patience with them because they're paid to obfuscate. But I've also seen PR people who made great sources.
6. Know their friends and enemies. Every company, county department, baseball team, and state agency has suppliers, ad agencies, PR firms, and caterers. Learn who they are and get aquainted. They all send out useless press releases, but take note of the players and make contact when you're not on deadline, so they know who you are.
Competitors are great sources. They study the competition constantly and know what each other is up to. And they'll happily chat for hours. I got a lot out of Kimberly Clark officials because it's full of ex-Proctoids. And they're constantly in court fighting P&G for various patent infringements, so they love to gossip. This is helpful in the writing process, too, when you're looking for the countermoves going on to whatever trend you might be writing about. Likewise, get to know the watchdogs. For me, it was the FDA officials who reviewed P&G's various new products.
7. Sometimes, we have to write about diapers. I cannot tell you how many times I wrote about disposable diapers. I'd find myself sitting at my desk thinking: This is not why I got into journalism! But P&G is the titan of the industry, making Pampers and Luvs. So I wrote about the diaper derby between Pampers and Kimberly Clark's Huggies. New inventions such as elastic leg openings and super absorbent gel. But the point is this: doing such C+ dailies got me inside to meet scientists, marketing gurus and other midlevel managers who were great talkers. And it proved to P&G that I was serious about covering their industry. The payoff was huge. I wanted to go to an emerging market to write about the impossible task of selling products in those countries. I took my bureau chief with me to Cincinnati to have lunch with the CEO and his handlers. We talked about different markets. Naturally, I was hoping for some place exotic. Ed pitched the idea of Peru and Venezuela. It turned into a great story.
8. Start reporting the inevitable today. CEOs get fired. Police chiefs quit. You've got to collect string for the afternoon when the big story breaks. Every time you interview someone, take a few minutes to say: "I'm working on a profile about the chief, can you tell me about him?'' A key point here is collecting anecdotes, not just stale quotes like "He's a great man.''
Show me, don't tell me. For instance, brand managers at P&G would shudder when they remembered their early days selling Duncan Hines cake mixes. At staff meetings, Artzt would shred them if they couldn't recall their marketshare in St. Louis. This, among other things, earned him the nickname the Prince of Darkness. Another example for his profile came in one of our conversations. I asked him about his reputation for being tough on people in the up or out culture. He offered the memorable quote: "Sure, I've cleaned out the deadwood. Some of it was still breathing.''
In a recent profile on Barry Diller, we found out that the media mogul has eviscerated the lobby staff at the Home Shopping network if they put red poinsettias out for the holidays. He hates red flowers. Secretaries are scolded if he doesn't have perfectly sharp and evenly sized pencils at his side. And don't mess up his hot tea, either.
These are the kind of details that bring people to life. And you won't have time on deadline to gather many, so start reporting the inevitable now.
9. Make the boss look good. If you work at your beat, you will paper the room in scoops and memorable features. Your editor will love it because her boss will love it. And as I tell all my reporters: I don't care if you use your clips to get that job at the WSJ. (Hey, I did that!) Or if you just use them to decorate your living room. I care about finding great stories for our readers.
10. Work for editors who get it. All of this is useless unless you can train your editors to understand what beat reporters need.
So what does a beat reporter need from her editor? I've thought about my reporting days and also asked my staff the same question.
Here's what we came up with:
1. Support. Does the paper care about what you're doing? If not, we gotta talk. What are the priorities and how to juggle dailies vs. weekend features and projects? How much time will you get for each?
2. Feedback. No matter where you work, no matter if you're a reporter or an editor, we all want to know the answer to the question: "How am I doing?'' Every idea can't be brilliant, but I truly believe the best stories come from ideas that reporters come up with.
Feedback has to be on a weekly basis, not just in an annual review. I can't tell you how frustrated reporters get when editors surprise them with bad news in a review. If there's a problem, work it out now, don't wait.
We do story chats with each reporter every couple of weeks, in addition to the daily conversations. The story chats are 30 minutes of one on one time. I say: "Give me your three best ideas and let's refine them.'' We also have a schedule for the rest of the year on who will deliver the big centerpieces for our Sunday and Monday sections. That way, everyone can be thinking ahead and there are no surprises. Naturally, we rework as needed to deal with breaking news.
Every reporter has different needs. Some visit every couple weeks. Others want to chat several times a day. Let your editor know what you need and want. You are creating content and we're here to help.
I'm a firm believer in public praise. At news meetings, we do a post mortem on that morning's paper. If the managing editor or others don't point out my staff's fine work, I speak up. And I send notes after the meeting on what kudos were offered. I'm fortunate to work for an editor is keenly interested in the business report, so there's no shortage of feedback from the boss.
3. Distance. We need to let reporters have time to concentrate on developing ideas, sources, and stories.
4. Variety. We will all be bored if we don't get some variety. I sent the seminar participants my all-time favorite story about single moms in Appalachia. I did that while covering Procter & Gamble. I cranked out a raft of diaper stories, leders, and other stuff so I could justify taking a week to go to Kentucky. It helped keep me sane because my passion is to write about people like that, not spoiled CEOs. Even on a beat, reporters need to be encouraged to write a variety of stories. Q&As, profiles, and brites all add to the mix. Nowadays especially, we need to think about some stories to add humor, joy, and optimism to all of our sections, especially page one.
5. A push. Beat reporters can get stuck in a rut. Sometimes a push can be as simple as a brainstorming session with a handful of reporters. Fresh ideas come from people who aren't necessarily on the beat. Sometimes a push is sending someone to a seminar.
6. Cover. Editors need to protect their reporters from too many ideas from every other editor. We need to set priorities.
7. Guts. I can't tell you how many times the Procter & Gamble PR staff flew to New York to yell at the Journal's managing editor and insist that I be removed from the beat. I owe them a thanks because I generally got a nice raise after those visits.
Now it's my job when the angry CEO calls. I recall one day when a vice president of a company called to complain. He barked at the editorial assistant who was dutifully taking his calls. He called back three times in two hours. In his final call, he yelled: "You tell her the next call will be from our lawyer.'' His beef was about a story that said company officials didn't return phone calls seeking comments. This VP claimed that my reporter didn't bother to call. I know my reporters. They call.
Often.
So I called this guy back and said: "I apologize for not being here for your call. I was in a meeting.'' I listened to his beef. But I also told him that he doesn't need to bully the folks who answer the phone. As for lawyers, I got some, too. "Would you like me to transfer you?''
8. Finally, editors need to provide a "happy drawer.'' That's where we keep the chocolate. There is a correlation between chocolate served and copy moved.
