In this podcast hosted by Megan Calcote, Glenn Hall, Executive Editor at the Washington Post, shares more tips for creating winning business investigations. He urges writers to break up long-form articles into short, easily digested pieces; beware the extreme anecdote; and employ videos, graphics and slideshows. Hall’s tips were originally shared during Reynolds Week 2016.
Transcript
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Megan Calcote: How to Cover Money: More tips for building a winning business investigation.
Glenn Hall: I actually think that whenever you see something that does particularly well in traffic, it’s an indication that you’ve struck a nerve with your audience, and if you’ve struck a nerve, you should be looking for the next installment and another installment after that, and you keep going until you find out whether or not you’ve exhausted your audience’s interest. I don’t find that to be negative. I find that listening to our audience is actually a positive.
Calcote: Hello and welcome to the Reynolds Center podcast. We are 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 bring you more tips from Glenn Hall, the executive editor at the Washington Post, on how to build a winning business investigation. Hall was the keynote speaker at Reynolds Week 2016 where he originally shared these tips. As you heard on our recent podcast, a good story will have data and at least two of these three elements: a hero, a victim or a villain. When you’re ready to start looking for your characters, it’s important to make sure that you’re picking the right story.
Hall: It’s really important to pick the right anecdote. I can’t tell you how often I have encountered as an editor, and how often perhaps as a reporter I might have done this myself before I knew better that I picked the most extreme example, I found the one person in a million, in 10 million, that was harmed by something and wanted to build a story around that. And it turns out that there were 10 million people who were not harmed, but how I’m going to write about the one who was harmed, is that fair? Is that the right anecdote? Is that extreme example really an accurate portrayal of the situation? Right? That’s where the data, again, help us find, where is the broad based pain that we are trying to write about, or the great hero and the proof that this person has some great dilemma in the world. Do we need to get to those facts and get away from the outliers in statistical analysis, you kind of throw out the outliers because that’s not necessarily indicative of the true pattern. We want to find the true pattern, and that’s why it’s important to make sure that we look first to the data and then we find the right anecdote. The anecdote that really cannot be challenged because someone says, “Oh, well, that’s the outlier.” or “That’s an extreme example.”
Calcote; Once you select your story or stories based on your data, don’t be afraid to break it into multiple pieces.
Hall: So if we think about investigative journalism as an iterative process, that we bring pieces of information out, not one big bang, but information as we get it and we deliver it, we have a multitude of stories that add up to a package later. Anybody a fan of serial? This is episodic journalism of the modern era.
Calcote: This style of storytelling is gaining in popularity, but it’s been around a lot longer than you might think.
Hall: To go to the future of journalism, we have to actually go all the way back in time. Cliffhangers, books back in the day, in the Victorian era, were actually done, think about Great Expectations and so forth, were actually done in a sort of serial version. Like we’ll write a chapter, a single, self-contained unit that would be the start of story, and we put that out and in print and be out in the periodicals, and always left you hanging. You needed to know what was going to happen next. That makes you buy the next installment, right? And that was its own sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. And this analysis by Tom Ho, himself a writer, is supposed to capture that sense of waiting and anticipation and need, and that was one of his explanations for why serial was so successful. I think it rings true.
Calcote: Breaking your long form investigation up will help you tailor your pieces to a length your audience will actually read.
Hall: As someone who loves long form journalism, I run out of steam reading a 10,000-word story, but I will read a chapter and happily read another chapter another day. But when I have that big stack on my desk of unread stories, I don’t know that I ever get to the bottom of it. But every day another bite? Yeah, I’ll read that way. And I think we should all bear in mind how user behavior has changed in a mobile device. I will point out, if you pull out your phone right now and call up any story thumb through, how many times do you thumb before you’re done? I haven’t done any scientific study, but my average is four. Do you know how much you read in four? About 400 words, not 4000. So giving it to people in installments is an important piece of this.
Calcote: Telling your story in multiple installments will give you the ability to see if your investigation is actually resonating with your readers by examining your web traffic.
I actually think that whenever you see something that does particularly well in traffic, it’s an indication that you’ve struck a nerve with your audience. And if you’ve struck a nerve, you should be looking for the next installment and another installment after that, and you keep going until you find out whether or not you’ve exhausted your audience’s interest. I don’t find that to be negative. I find that listening to our audience is actually a positive
Calcote: Once you’ve found a story that your audience enjoys, publishing more stories in the investigation will allow you to engage that same audience over a longer period of time.
Hall: I think this is an important element for us all to bear in mind, that you get more opportunities to attract readers if you have more stories coming out on a regular basis.
Calcote: And don’t be afraid to use other journalistic forms or mediums to tell your story.
Hall: Some people are visual. Some people need video, some people need quick hits. All of these things are legitimate, if there’s legitimate information behind it. You deliver information to people in a way that works for them. That’s okay. That’s good.
Calcote: If you take a look at the 2015, Barlett and Steele Awards. All of the winners submitted business investigations that consisted of multiple parts. Publishing your investigation as you’re uncovering evidence will allow you to continue to dig into the story and further the narrative you’ve already started.
Hall: More opportunities to draw people in, rather than a single opportunity. More opportunities to have them connect with you and the story that you’re trying to tell, rather than a single opportunity. And use every entry point possible. Don’t think it’s a negative to do a five-things or a slide show, as long as there’s valuable information in there that creates an entry point for people into the news and the story that you’re trying to tell, then it’s a legitimate form of journalism, in my mind.
Calcote: Thank you, Glenn Hall, for sharing your insights with us at Reynolds Week 2016, and thank you listeners for joining us for another episode of the How to Cover Money podcast. If you’ve written a great piece of investigative business journalism, the Reynolds Center is now accepting submissions for the 2016 Barlett and Steele Awards for investigative business journalism. The awards feature a Gold Award of $5,000, a Silver prize of $2,000 and a Bronze Award of $1,000. Submit your work today by visiting businessjournalism.org and clicking Awards and Fellowship at the top of the page. Applications must be received by August 1, 2016 and submission is free. 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 weekly 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 a review to help 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 for an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune reporters, Glenn Howatt and Chris Serres, Silver Award winners from the 2015 Barlett and Steele Awards.
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