With ‘so what,’ Milwaukee paper makes you care about patents backlog
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Ben Poston talks about one of his stories at IRE's 2010 Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference in Phoenix.
John Schmid and Ben Poston of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel were finalists in the business/economics reporting category for the National Journalism Awards sponsored by the Scripps Howard Foundation for their articles about how the backlog in patent applications affects the economy.
Their stories, and a nifty interactive timeline, are based on a plethora of numbers, and the topic on its face doesn’t sound all that exciting. What they manage to do so well is explain why you should care:
“Amid the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office could be seen as a way to jump-start the economy. Instead, it sits on applications for years, placing inventors at risk of losing their ideas to savvy competitors at home and abroad.”
Today’s Tip: Ask yourself the “so-what” question when first thinking about an investigative project.
If all your hunches play out about the project, what’s the nut graf you could write? And is the possible impact of that graf worth the reporting effort you’re going to have to put in to get it?
Another thing that Schmid and Poston do so well in these stories is find local people with patents pending who have suffered financial setbacks because of the delays. For example, Roger Hoffman of Green Bay invented Internet-based technology for ordering supplies. “By the time he’d waited five years for a patent, the technology was in wide use, and he couldn’t benefit from it,” they write.
Often, attorneys who have filed suit or administrative appeals against the agency or company in question can help you find these real people.
Remember: data is just the starting point for a story. Without human examples, you’re stuck with deadly dull reading.
