A Primer for Novice Reporters

1. Approach your job  with an equal mixture of cynicism and idealism. Cynicism gets you the truth. Idealism keeps your sanity. If you can't mix cynicism and idealism, you're not going to make it. You've got to be idealistic enough to want to change the world  -- and cynical enough to know you're not going to do it.

2. Good reporting makes good writing. If you haven't done a good job of gathering information, then writing is a labor. If you've got the facts, then writing is easy. Look for news in ALL the right places.

3. If you've got a simple story, you're a simpleton. Stories aren't simple. Neither is life. Look beyond the obvious. What are people not telling you? Why? What are the implications of this story, or this development? Is there a ripple effect? Has this been done anywhere before? Chances are if it's happening in one town, it's already happened somewhere else before. Chances are if it's news, Congress has held hearings on it and someone has anointed himself as an expert on it.

4. Stories don't just happen. They happen over and over. Humans haven't changed much since Adam and Eve wised up. Relationships became incestuous shortly thereafter. Become a historian of human nature. Chances are the past can give you a few clues about the present.

5. Readers want to know one thing -- "what's in it for me." They read some stories because the stories make them feel superior to others. They read other stories because the stories make them feel lucky. They read some stories because the stories give them information they need to make money, or be attractive, or find a place to vacation, or improve their self-esteem. They don't care about your grandmother's parakeet, what your roommate thinks about life, or whether the Young Republicans were able to meet without taking themselves too seriously. They do care about things that affect them and that interest them. If you don't pay attention to what the reader needs, then the reader isn't going to pay much attention to your story.

6. Organize your information by subject matter. Get the main points in the first two or three sentences -- one thought = one sentence - and then let those points become your outline for the rest of the story. Look at the roundup pyramid format in the writing section for more details. One source and one point stories should be good for one thing only  -- an automatic pink slip from your newspaper. Unfortunately, standards have slipped.

7. Take a tip from the preacher -- tell the audience what you're going to talk about and then talk about it. Preachers always start off by telling you what their point is. Then they spend the next hour or so trying to convince you that they are right and another few minutes suggesting you agree that they're right by walking down the aisle. Reporters don't get to offer an invitation (and they don't get to pass the collection plate) but they organize information in the same way. Tell the reader what you're going to say before you say it. See the roundup pyramid for an example.

8. Read your story out loud. If it sounds good to the ear, it will read well to the eye. If it takes more than one breath to say any sentence, find a period key and use it. That advice came from John Chancellor and Walter Mears. Make it your motto. Only the birth control pill can keep you out of more trouble.

9. One thought = one sentence = one paragraph. Putting two thoughts into the same sentence dilutes the value of both. Putting two sentences into one paragraph is only done by those journalists with more training than you and by English majors who don't know any better.

10. Who what sentences are the best sentences. Tell the reader who said it and then tell the reader what they said. If you do that, you'll write declarative sentences and nobody will complain about your passive voice.

11. If it's a quote, put the attribution at the end. If it's a paraphrase, put it at the start. This will make all your paraphrases into who what sentences. And by putting the attribution behind quotes, your story will have a mixture that is pleasing to the reader.

12. Be specific. What is few to me may be many to you. Avoid general terms that require the reader to interpret the meaning. Telling me a man is rich is not nearly as informative as telling me the man is worth $4 million.

13. Challenge your sources. Ask them how they know something. Ask them who disagrees with them. Ask them how they can say this when they just said that. Don't just write down what people tell you unless you're planning a career as a stenographer.

14. Know the answers to your questions. If you know what the answer should be, then you'll know when your source isn't exactly telling you the truth. If you haven't done any research to begin with, if you don't know what others have said about the subject or what your source has said in the past or what governmental records tell you, then you're just another non-thinking flack for the source's point of view.

15. Think. Your brain needs exercise too.