Reprinted from Workbench: The Bulletin of the National Writers' Workshop, Vol. 4
Perhaps the most essential characteristic of good story ideas is that they come from good questions. And it's actually quite useful to use the classic journalistic questions as a starting point: who, what, where, when, why, how? It's useful, but it's not sufficient. You must expand them: Who else would know that? What is or isn't counted? Where did you get that? How is it supposed to work? Am I at the beginning? Let me see that again? May I have a copy? What would "they" tell me? What do you think? What does this mean? Why do I care? Why do you care? Why did I think this was a good story?
Be powerfully observant
It's easier to be curious when you go out of your way to see new things. It means noticing something that's different than usual, that seems out of place, that you can't explain. It means driving the long way to work and noting what you pass. It means visiting someplace in the middle of the night that you usually see only during the day, or visiting a part of town you've only read about, or touring the lab where medical students learn surgery on corpses. It means pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone.
The more you expose yourself to different people, places, and things, the easier curiosity becomes. Journalists must push themselves to see the unseen, hear the unheard, touch the untouchable. They do these things because, in a way, journalists are the eyes and ears of the public. Journalists have access to places other people don't. They get to talk to people the general public never even gets close to. They get exposed to things other people wouldn't even dream of seeing or hearing. With that access comes responsibility to ask questions, follow leads, and probe in search of information people need to make good decisions about their lives.
It's also possible to awaken your curiosity as you follow your usual routines, just by opening your eyes and asking a few new questions. At the grocery store for example, who is working the checkout lines: why are so many under 20 or over 60 or Hispanic? Is that the same in all grocery stores, or just this chain? Why is it so? In your own church or mosque or synagogue, who's joining? Who's leaving? Why? Take a look at construction around town: Who's building what where? What trends can you detect?
Demetria Kalodimos, anchor and reporter at WSMV-TV in Nashville, was giving a luncheon speech in Middle Tennessee and stopped for gas in a small town. She'd been through there many times before but noticed this time a number of signs in Spanish. She thought that was odd, in a nearly all-white county, and started asking questions.
She learned the Spanish was to attract the business of Mexican and Central American migrant workers, who gradually were assuming the difficult and sometimes dangerous task of harvesting tobacco. Demetria's subsequent reporting also revealed the workers were living in sub-standard conditions in prosperous agricultural communities. Many dozens of videotapes and notebooks and months later, Demetria's series, "Hard Luck Harvest," aired, right in the middle of the tobacco auction season, and proceeded to win the National Headliner's Award. All that, just because she noticed a few signs written in Spanish, and was curious.
Test assumptions
Making assumptions can be more than embarassing. It can be damaging to communities, to groups of people, to your reputation, sometimes to your own safety. And it is counter to the mission of journalism, which is to bring accurate, fair, full information to people to enable them to make better decisions about their lives.
So it's important first of all to recognize and bring to conscious awareness the assumptions you make. You have to admit and be able to reflect on your assumptions before you can test them. And then you test them. That's what members of the WCCO-TV newsroom in Minneapolis did in 1994.
Along with many people in Minneapolis, WCCO news staffers assumed that the most dangerous place in town was downtown, the "inner city." Police assumed it and thus assigned most of their foot patrols and two-officer cars there; news people assumed it and reported on downtown often and in a bad light; the public assumed it and stayed away from downtown. Downtown businesses suffered and attendance dropped at the theaters and the symphony.
One day, after a couple of highly publicized downtown murders, news director John Lansing suggested it would be a good idea to test the assumption that most murders occur downtown. "Either way, I knew we had a story," said John. "If most murders happen downtown, we have proven the assumption is correct. If most murders are committed someplace else, we've disproven it and we've got an even better story."
Assignment editor Mike Pool was ready. He made it a habit to keep voluminous files on a number of subjects. With the help of researcher/reporter Alan Cox checking police records, he began to painstakingly plot the location of every murder on a map. When he finished, his map revealed something even the Minneapolis police didn't know: Most murders in Minneapolis occurred near interstate exits-not downtown.
Make time for the "extras"
Audience research shows viewers believe we don't follow up on stories enough. We just report the initial event or incident that brought them into the news and then forget about them. There are practical reasons for that. In many newsrooms, reporters and photographers are rushed from assignment to assignment, live shot to live shot, with little time to catch their breath, much less to ask one more question, check a public record, or chat with an office worker. But when you start squeezing those "extras" into your day, you'll find your reporting enriched, you'll find yourself generating more original stories that no one else has, you'll find yourself on the receiving end of tips from sources leading you to bigger and better stories.
Some of my favorite "last" questions: "What else should I know about this?" "Who could tell me more?" "What kinds of records are kept on this?" "If you were me, what would you do next?" These can lead you to buried treasure you might not otherwise find. It's not that your interview subjects want to withhold information from you, it's just that they don't think about the story the way you do and simply are answering the questions you ask. That's why it's a good idea to ask "one more."
Office workers, maintenance crews, and others who appear to be on the margins of your stories actually can lead you to the core. Besides being the right thing to do, it's also of professional value to you to strike up conversations with these people as you pursue your stories. The officials may tell you how things are supposed to work. The "marginal" people will tell you how they do work. The executives may tell you they cannot locate the record you're requesting. The records clerk may look it up for you on the spot. Such friendly advances pay off in other ways as well.
After doing a number of stories around the issue of poor record keeping in the state prison system, I got a call one day from a man who claimed to be a clerk in the central administrative office of the state department of corrections. He said he had some information that would interest me. I told him I had to see original documents. He said he'd lose his job if he gave them to me. I told him I'd take copies and would try to verify them. He said he'd leave them for me behind a certain radiator, in a plain brown envelope, on the third floor of the administration building. He did. I verified them. Thus began an exchange that led to nearly two dozen stories on the breakdown of control in prison record keeping, which was leading to the early release of violent criminals who should have remained behind bars, and the unnecessarily long incarceration of first-time offenders in prison for non-violent offenses. Certainly, being nice is the right thing to do. It's also smart.
Toward enterprise reporting
Look for who has not been on the air. Ask yourself: Whose voices are rarely or never heard on our air? What subjects are rarely or never covered? Get more of those voices and subjects on your air. Pay special attention to the vulnerable and powerless.
Carve out areas of expertise, preferably based on your personal interests or holes in present coverage. It might mean monthly visits to the elementary school you pass on your way to work, or new conversations at your favorite dress shop, or stopping by your place of worship mid-week.
Create new beats. For example, your favorite nurse at your pediatrician's office: What's going around these days? Any unusual recoveries or special-needs kids' success stories? The bookstore: What are the hottest sellers? The museum curator. The multiplex cinema manager. The Salvation Army general.
Ask different questions when you make your old beat calls. Examples: Any changes in patrol assignments this week? What kind of training have you had lately? Who are the rising stars? What assignment are people fighting to get? Which are considered punishment?
Go to where the pack isn't.
Seek ideas from everyone in the newsroom and everyone in your life.
Make sure you and the photographer work together as a team.
Use photographers as field producers.
Go to where the puck is going to be.
Get the target of your story early to open up and tell their side.
Ask yourself, who has the money and the power in this town? Who doesn't? Why not?
Look at the spending. How much does your city or state pay private attorneys for public defender work? On whom does the congressman spend campaign money?
Try comparisons. What happens to murder defendants in our city compared with those in other cities of similar size?
Return to big-and small-stories from the recent-or distant-past and update them. Citizens often accuse us of hit-and-run reporting and long for us to do more followups. It's a good idea.
Turn to the photographer at the end of interviews to ask if s/he has any questions.
Arrive at news conferences and meetings early. Or be the last to leave.
Turn your back on the main story-especially spot news-and report on what you see.
Figure out which people are closest to the story, the ones whose lives are directly effected by it, and interview them on camera. Save officials and experts and spokespeople for the phone and build information you get from them into leads, tracks, and tags.
If there's one persistent plaint of newsroom managers, it's that reporters lack original story ideas. They don't know how to cull stories from the world around them. They don't know how to approach old stories in new ways. They don't know how to find the unusual in the routine.
You can be the answer to that call.
In the end, original thinking grows out of plain old curiosity. But that's a characteristic that has been beaten out of many journalists. Your challenge is to rediscover your own innate curiosity, to nurture it with freedom and time, and to reward yourself when you take risks. If you succeed, you will be an enterprising reporter who engages and informs viewers by surprising and delighting them with unexpected voices, sounds, and ideas. And you'll be a model whom other reporters will regard with respect and admiration.
