In this episode, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard discuss strategies for reporters to generate story ideas to keep their editors happy. If you’re a reporter who is experiencing “story block” this episode will give you a range of ideas to help you break out of your slump and keep those stories generating time and time again.
Transcript
[Intro Music]
Micki Maynard: How to Cover Money: Thinking like a business reporter, even when you’re not one. Welcome to the Reynolds Center podcast. We’re coming to you from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. We’re based at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. I’m Micki Maynard, Director of the Reynolds Center, and with me, as he is every time. Is my co-host, Mark Remillard. He’s a Cronkite alumni and a reporter and anchor with KTAR News in Phoenix. Hi Mark!
Remillard: Hi Micki.
Maynard: Today we bring you. Series 1, Episode 2: Help me come up with story ideas.
Remillard: Yeah, Micki, these are oftentimes young reporters, or even maybe advanced reporters are in their newsroom and their editors are frustrated with them because they’re, you know, they’re having a hard time coming up with story ideas.
Maynard: That’s the one thing I hear from editors all the time, is my reporters are having trouble bringing the good ideas. The Reynolds Center actually offers custom training for newsrooms on subjects like this, and I’ve actually already done two seminars on helping young reporters come up with story ideas. So we know that it’s a problem, and now we’ve got some tips to help you solve it.
Remillard: So let’s go into that. What are some ways that you know reporters can come up with their own ideas to pitch to their editors?
Maynard: One of the things that I found is that story ideas are everywhere, and you just have to stay alert and look for them. One of the best tips I ever got was at a writing seminar for fiction writing, and one of the authors who was there said that she carries a notebook with her everywhere. Whenever she’s at a stoplight, if she sees a girl walking across the crosswalk in a red dress, she’ll write down “girl in red dress,” and maybe two books later, she puts the girl in the red dress into her novel. Obviously, if you’re working as a reporter, you don’t have enough time to wait two years for that, but what you want to do is keep your eyes open and when you see something like a sign that says “Coming Soon: A New Restaurant,” you want to write that down or put it on a recorder – some people have recording apps on their iPhones – and just the act of repeating it, either writing it down or speaking it into your phone, will help you remember that. And pretty soon, you’ll get in the rhythm of just writing stuff down or speaking stuff when you see something different, and those are ways that you can come up with story ideas.
Remillard: And I think if you are writing them down in a notebook, or, you know, everybody has a phone with them often, writing them down in in your notepad, and your phone is a way to do that. I found that when I’m at work and you’ve got those slow days where nothing’s going on, and you can kind of flip that up and be like, you know, that’s something that I really wanted to look into that I never did. So you can really pull some things out of your back pocket.
Maynard: One of the things that I use with Twitter is I use the little favorite stars to mark stories that I might do something with later. At Reynolds, we have Must Read Money stories every single day, and I’m always looking for ideas to put into that column. Sometimes it isn’t a whole story. Sometimes you read a story and you get to the end of the story and the last line of the story might be the first line of your next story. So basically, what you want to be doing is actively reading or actively listening to broadcast reports. And if something piques your curiosity, you know, ping yourself. Make a note of that.
Remillard: Yeah, you mentioned keeping your eyes open. If you’re walking around and you see a sign or you see something that that interests you, you know, keeping your eyes open is really important, but you know, what about keeping your ears open when you are actually in the process of reporting?
Maynard: Right. A lot of times when you make appointments to talk to sources, you’re there for a specific story. But if you’re smart about it, you’ll be listening not only to the answers they give you for that story, but possible threads that lead to the next story. I have a method of making little stars in my notebook and circling things if I think it’s going to lead to the next story. And here’s a tip that I got from Matt Thompson at NPR. You want to think of something called the “River of News.” So, you are sent to cover the mayor’s press conference on a new bike sharing program, and you notice that as part of the bike sharing program, there’s going to be new bike lanes painted in your city, so we’re going to be able to rent bikes and we’re also going to have bike lanes to ride in. Don’t just do one story saying, “Hey, we’ll have rental bikes and bike lanes.” Do a bike story and do a bike lane story, and that way, there’s your next story idea. You say to your editor, “Hey, I know you sent me to cover bike sharing, but the mayor was also talking about bike lanes. So I want to follow this up with a bike lane story,” and your editor will love you.
Remillard: Do you have any advice also for when you’re dealing with sources and you’re asking them, or you’re you’re listening for other ideas, do you have any advice for ways to make them more comfortable with you? I know, in my experience, I carry a big recorder, because I work in radio, putting that away sometimes, you know, helps them open up sometimes, and when they’re not as on the record.
Maynard: As we said in episode one of this podcast, you should always be doing research. So when you go into an interview, have a couple of things to ask them about. Maybe they went to Princeton University. You could say, “Did you go to your latest reunion?” And they might say, you know, I went to my latest reunion and Mark Zuckerberg was there. And you could say, “What did you talk to Mark Zuckerberg about?” So it’s conversational, it’s small talk, but it’s also a way to mine for story ideas.
Remillard: When you’re really stumped and you’re having a hard time and you really just can’t come up with anything. What are some ways to kind of break that story block, instead of a writer’s block?
Maynard: That’s a really great way to put it. So when I’m in interviews, I often say, “What aren’t we covering? What haven’t you seen a story about? What’s everybody talking about?” So I was recently at a conference in Birmingham, Alabama, the Southern Automotive Conference, and I talked about why teens aren’t getting their driver’s license. And person after person came up to me with their story of why their teenager wasn’t getting their driver’s license. And I’m writing down all these ideas from those conversations, so sometimes it’s just “tell me what you’re not reading or hearing,” and they’ll tell you. There there’s a lot of cross talk that goes on within industries and within organizations that never gets to reporters. So you be the reporter that gets that information.
Remillard: One of the things that I see a lot and is can be a good way to get stories is off of lists. They’re very popular online. You see them on almost any news website, any non-news website, often ranks things, and that can actually be a good way to get stories.
Maynard: People love lists. People love to read lists. People love to see where they end up on lists, and people love to compare themselves with others on lists. So, you had that experience when you were in my class. I asked the students in my class to come up with ideas that could compare Phoenix to someplace else. And you chose.
Remillard: Yeah, I chose, Austin is a great way to get a story out of this by we found the Forbes list of the fastest growing cities in the U.S., and at the top was Austin, Texas for four years in a row, actually. And third on the list was Phoenix. So we decided to travel to Austin take a look at what was making it so successful. So, go into the things on the list that put Austin at the top. It’s good, job growth, low unemployment, and really start talking to people about what it is that Austin has been doing to cultivate that atmosphere. And then bring that back to Phoenix. And compare it to Phoenix. Is this something that Phoenix can do? Is it something, how far behind is Phoenix?
Maynard: People are really interested in rankings, and so I think that’s one of the things that everyone should look at, as covering money and as business reporters, is be constantly aware of where your city, where your college, where everybody ends up on all these rankings.
Remillard: We’ve talked a lot about being aware and keeping your eyes open. What are some things that you are looking for when you’re kind of out in your daily business and out of your daily life?
Maynard: You have to be really aware of changes in neighborhoods and downtowns and suburbs. One of the things that I look for are new businesses opening and old businesses closing. So, I’m a big ice cream fan, and one of the things that the Phoenix area has is ice cream. So a very famous ice cream place here is Sweet Republic. They have a branch out in Scottsdale. Well, Scottsdale is about a 20-minute drive for me from where I live, and I’m not always willing to drive 20 minutes for ice cream, but I noticed recently that Sweet Republic had opened up in my neighborhood, five minutes from my house. So of course, I had to go in, and I was talking to the manager, and I said, what led you to open up a branch in this part of Phoenix? It’s an up and coming part of Phoenix. And she said, “Well, we looked at the zip codes of the people who are driving out to Scottsdale, and we noticed that this zip code was where we were getting a lot of customers. So we decided to find a location and open up in this part of Phoenix.” So that’s what you want to look for, is growth. You want to look for new and you also want to look through businesses closing. I was looking at a list of Phoenix businesses that had recently closed. And I’ve only been living in this area for about a year, but I had been to three of the places on the list that had closed. And I would hate to think that places don’t last in Phoenix, but I have a feeling that, you know, they close and they open just like any place else, which is the perfect story idea.
Remillard: So once you have maybe something in mind, you have, I’ve been walking around, I saw this, this building that’s just the black hole for businesses. Every three months, there’s a new business.
Maynard: A cursed corner they call it.
Remillard: Yeah, so let’s say you see that. Where do you go next?
Maynard: One of the things that you want to do with the story like that is, if it is a cursed corner, you want to talk to the owners or the people who bought the franchise and say, “What makes you think that you’re going to be successful when nobody else has been successful?” The other thing to keep in mind is that you’re always looking for the new, and that applies even to stories that you cover regularly. So if you cover the mayor, you’re probably talking to the mayor’s opponent or members of city council. Try to branch out, try to find someone new for every story, because people are interested in hearing from new voices, and they’re interested in hearing new ideas, and certainly your editors are interested in new ideas, and so these new sources will lead you to new story ideas all the time.
Remillard: That’s it for Series 1, Episode 2 of How to Cover Money. Next time, we’ll look at sorting out a complicated topic: How to Write a Business Feature.
Maynard: Support for our podcast comes from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. Visit our website at business journalism.org. You can find us on Twitter @bizjournalism. That’s B I Z journalism. You can also look us up on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. I’m Micki Maynard, now start thinking like a business reporter.
