My first abstract reading was on Mark Glaser’s “Revamping the Story Flow for Journalists.” It related to an experience I had last semester, when I started out as an administrative reporter at The Independent Florida Alligator. My university desk editor, Jessie DaSilva, sent her reporters an e-mail. It outlined her ideas for the fall, including a tutorial on online media, complete with video and audio training. Her e-mail ended with “We need to learn this stuff if we want jobs after we graduate.”
Initially I shrugged off the comment, but now I accept it as an obvious fact. Print journalists who aren’t educated in multimedia run a huge risk of being unmarketable in the newspaper world. Reporters who can’t enterprise ways of taking ideas from the community are journalistically close-minded. The Internet is taking over print media, and print media had better keep up with changing times.
Now readers don’t want to just hear about citrus farmers in central Florida, they want to see photos of Farmer John reaching up to adjust his citrus equipment. They want to hear audio of the machines clanking, of migrant workers picking oranges and of Farmer John talking about the changing citrus industry. Readers want to be viewers; they want to see edited footage of how an orange goes from a seed to a plant to an item in a grocery store.
Along with the shift in how a story becomes much more than only a printed article, there is a shift in how reporters gather information. Glaser’s “Revamping the Story Flow for Journalists” describes a world in which reporters mingle with the general public to create story ideas. His idea is that it’s impossible to run a fleshed-out beat without incorporating readers who are encompassed in that beat, and I agree. In Glaser’s world, ideas should flow from all outlets that include the old way of news gathering plus new outlets, such as blogs set up for experts and for reader feedback. Furthermore, readers can comment or edit content Wikipedia-style. In this way, “News” will always be new, due to the possibility of forever correcting and adding content to stories.
I would raise some questions to Glaser’s utopia of new media collaboration. It sounds great, if executed correctly. “The way it will be” allows for freedom of speech and a forum for voicing it, but also might lead to plagiarism within the comments section and might lead to laziness in reporters. Plus, other newspaper reporters might take ideas from the blogs and write their own stories, thereby scooping the reporter who originally set up the blog.
Additionally, newspaper copy editors may have to constantly check the information to insure quality of the writing and facts. Although “The way it was” sounds archaic now, it did allow for complete control over fact errors and content.
My second reading was a Web site that contained the list “50 places to shop for story ideas.”
The list sounded a lot like Glaser’s description of how to find story ideas in “The way it was,” but all could be revamped to include video and audio. I’ve seen this list before, and after reading it I’m always amazed at reporters who complain about not knowing where to find story ideas. Anything, anything can be a story. The enterprising journalist knows how to look at the room surrounding her and to think up a dozen story ideas.
Of course, this is easier said than done. I once thought writing a story about UF’s new General Counsel, Jamie Lewis Keith, would be fascinating for UF students to hear about. Turns out, she was a very nice person but not very interesting. She makes a lot of money, donates some time to charity, has a husband and kid and used to work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After writing the story, there really wasn’t much news to Mrs. Keith. My story was boring and it only ran at about five inches.
But the next week, I saw her eating pizza at Leonardo’s Pizza by the Slice. A woman who drives an Audi convertible and alone makes a cool quarter-million dollars a year was eating at a place that offered a full meal for $5? Keith was a good story idea, but I should have tried to focus on a smaller, less-known aspect of her, like her choice of pizza or something else relatable to UF students. I should have written a story about all the faculty members who eat at cheap Gainesville joints, no matter how “indie” the joints are. Anyone who’s taken microeconomics with Dr. Rush knows how much he loves Leo’s. And how spectacular would it have been to see UF President Machen at Satchel’s Pizza? Oh, the wonders of feature writing.
Enterprising ideas is potentially easy, but it might be tricky to focus on a newsworthy topic of that idea. I think this is something all fledgling reporters, like myself, must work on.
Week 1 Story Idea: http://thebluepencil.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/hello-world/#comments
Tags: revamp, story ideas
