Megan Calcote reviews some of the best tips for generating local story ideas by Jennifer Conlin, New York Times contributor and founder of Creative Voice. Conlin emphasizes the value of fresh perspectives, some observations she has made in her reporting and the importance of trusting your own instincts. Conlin originally shared these tips at SABEW 2015 during a session on covering regional economics.
Transcript
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Megan Calcote: How to Cover Money: Generating story ideas.
Jennifer Conlin: I listen really closely, and if I think something is interesting, I’ve learned to trust that it probably is interesting.
Calcote: Hello and welcome to the Reynolds Center podcast. We’re coming to you from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, based at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. I’m Megan Calcote, host of the How to Cover Money podcast. Today we’re sharing tips for generating local story ideas from Jennifer Conlin, New York Times contributor and founder of Creative Voice. Jennifer originally shared these tips with us at SABEW 2015 for our panel discussion on covering regional economics. Throughout her career, Jennifer had the opportunity to move to several cities. As you’re about to hear being able to look at an area with fresh eyes can give you new angles for your regional coverage.
Conlin: What I learned all those years and what kind of has propelled me to continue being a freelance journalist is that moving from country to country where I felt like there’s everybody knows more than I know, and I’ve just gotten here, and how can I possibly write on anything here, let alone business stories or important stories? And then what you realize is I saw things nobody else saw. I saw stories the other reporters who’d been there for a long time weren’t seeing because I was fresh. I was new. I was looking at the city with different eyes. And that turned out to be the case in every single place I moved. And I think to some extent, when I got back to Michigan, that put me in good stead, because even though I grew up in it in Michigan, I hadn’t lived in the states, in Michigan since I was 21 and now all of a sudden, I have to kind of write about this place that I haven’t been.
Calcote: If you’ve lived in the same place for a while, try talking to recent transplants to see what they have to say about the area. Their fresh point of view might give you some great story ideas. After moving back to Detroit, Jennifer started looking at census figures and noticed a trend other reporters hadn’t picked up on.
Conlin: The first piece when I got back that I noticed was how many running around Detroit? How many people, like all these young people, were moving to Detroit, and there were all these people coming in, and people from the suburbs were being back into Detroit. And meanwhile, the census figures were saying 2010 showed that in the last 10 years, Detroit had lost 25% of its population. But then when I looked the census figures, I saw that, in fact, during that same period, when the population had shrunk by 25%, there was something that said that there had been a 59% increase in the number of college-educated residents under the age of 35 who had moved to the area. That was nearly 30% more than two-thirds of the nation’s 51 largest cities that growth. I thought, well, that’s interesting. And then there was a national piece about, oh, you know, all the young graduates want to move to cities besides New York and Chicago. They’re going to Austin and they’re going to Seattle and they’re going to Portland. And so I thought, well, I’m going to say they’re coming to Detroit too, because I can see they are coming to Detroit.
Calcote: One of the things Jennifer talked about during the session was to identify national trends and then see if your area fits or not. If the trend exists, look to see if there’s something unique about how it’s unfolding in your particular area.
Conlin: When I see a story I like, I just figure out a way to do it. I figure out where it fits into a trend.
Calcote: Another great way to find story ideas is to think about businesses you already enjoy writing about. They may be doing something unique that warrants coverage.
Conlin: So I like writing about food as well. And Zingerman’s is an amazing place in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It’s a huge deli, but now they had become this community of businesses, and now they had fully adopted a kind of new business model called Open Book Management. Which is where your employees know all the figures of your business, where you share the figures, where you let employees, sort of via their helping and having entrepreneurial efforts, share in bonus plans and things. So beyond just being a nice Michigan deli, there was a business model here that I thought warranted a national story. And they do these training programs that people from all over the world were coming to learn how to do this open book management. So it not only highlighted other businesses in the Midwest, but it also was highlighting businesses abroad.
Calcote: Sometimes you may come up with an idea, but you’re not sure that it’s a full story on its own. As you’re about to hear, Jennifer has some ideas for how you can combine those little nuggets of inspiration into a bigger story.
Conlin: I had seen something local about a woman who had designed a coat that turns into a sleeping bag for the homeless. So I thought, well, that’s a good story. But sometimes I like bank a story because just that alone, I don’t know, I waited a little while, and then I kind of run into two other people who are doing other things. They’re like, one guy is taking old tires and making shoes for the homeless. Another person is doing this other kind of homeless clothing. And it turns out they’re all coming out of this product design class at the College for Creative Studies, which is one of the top art and design schools in Detroit that doesn’t really ever get much national press. So it was a great way to point out a great art school in the Midwest that doesn’t get talked about. Point out a way that Detroit is trying to combat homeless. So basically, I think there are stories everywhere. I mean, I find stories everywhere, and sometimes I hold on to them until I see where the trend is.
Calcote: When it comes to story ideas, one of the most important things you can do is to trust your instincts as a reporter.
Conlin: I listen really closely, and if I think something is interesting, I’ve learned to trust that it probably is interesting.
Calcote: Thank you so much, Jennifer for sharing your insight with us at SABEW 2015 and thank you listeners for joining us for another episode of the How to Cover Money podcast. The Reynolds Center is presenting a webinar in partnership with Media Shift on great tools you can use for mobile reporting. Visit businessjournalism.org to register for this webinar, presented by Mike Riley, the director of Cronkite News at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. If you missed your opportunity to attend the webinar live the replay is available online, on demand at businessjournalism.org. If you’re in need of more business journalism training, the Reynolds Center can help. Visit businessjournalism.org to find articles and self-guided training, download our free eBook: Guide to Business Beat Basics, or sign up for our monthly newsletter. The newsletter will keep you up to date on training opportunities from the Reynolds Center year round. If you enjoy the How to Cover Money podcast, make sure to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud, and while you’re there, leave us a rating or review to make the podcast more visible to other business journalists. Support for the How to Cover Money podcast comes from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. Join us next time on the How to Cover Money podcast. When we discuss the business of the marijuana industry with Kevin Dale and Ricardo Baca.
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