Beat reporting

1. Beat reporting JRNL 11 – Hofstra U. Prof. Vaccaro

2. Beginning a beat • You need • Story ideas • Trustable sources • Energy and adaptability • Proximity to your beat

3. Beginning a beat • Use shoe leather • Get to know your community • Meet its members in person • Take a walking tour of the community • Talk to people • Go where community members socialize, eat, hang out • Ask people what they want, what they’re interested in • Get a map, cruise the streets, explore

4. Beginning a beat • Check clips • Starting place for every beat writer is the newspaper, television, online news sources • When you find stories about major issues on your beat, consider a follow-up, more research, a better story with a new angle.

5. Beginning a beat • Let your fingers do the walking • Log online and search for every agency, every office, every key figure, every phone number or email address • Find out what the key figures in the beat do, find out who their secretaries and PR people are • Look for as many community directories as possible and make charts of the names/contact info/position so you stay organized

6. Beginning a beat • Create a story rolodex • What has been written? • What hasn’t been written? • What interests you, what interests the users/readers? • Is there a follow-up needed? • Is there a historical date of significance coming up? • Records and archives for you to find ideas?

7. Beginning a beat • Other tidbits to consider • Visit the library • Check bulletin boards • Check with your predecessor • Be a tourist • *Press for news releases • Find out who’s in charge

8. Specialty beats: Education • The education beat • Check educational journals for trends • When writing about the budget or test scores, explain what the numbers mean • Translate jargon • Have a strong connection with school board, district administration and understand the educational policy being set by the state education department • Be a constant figure at school board meetings and all academic events associated with audits, budgets and teacher’s unions

9. Specialty beats: Health/Enviro • Challenge source to speak laymen • Cut down on metaphors … no describing antibodies as “little foot soldiers” • Give story sense of true proportion … was it an isolated incident. No sense in creating panic. • Be wary of where you are getting your info. Strong sources are very important in this subject area.

10. Specialty beats: Business • Don’t make it boring, tell the story. There is drama, adventure, ups and downs in business. • Humanize stories by focusing on the impact of business or economic issues on people. • Avoid using several numbers in the same sentence or paragraph. • Simplify sentences – more complex, the more change of losing a reader • Avoid jargon, translate whenever necessary

11. Specialty beats: Sports • Keep your eye on the story … you can not look away during a game. It could be a crucial second. • Write background info ahead of time and plan for likely eventualities. • Think about a format in telling a story: gamer, box score, brief, blog, q&a, etc. • Good sports writers have a tone and can develop a theme within each story

12. Coaching Tips • Ask one source to recommend others • Keep a tickler file of story ideas and follow-up stories • Contact sources regularly • Check records on your beat • Check blogs related to your beat • Make stories relevant to readers • Seek human elements in stories • Translate jargon in technical stories