The past 4 weeks of my life have been non-stop chaos since I started working for Ohio State's student newspaper, The Lantern. Not just because I work for The Lantern (a privilege I pay Ohio State for), but because I also work 17 hours a week, have two other classes plus homework, 3 church meetings a week, a home to care for (which is looking distinctly neglected), a husband to love, and this apparently insignificant thing called a social life. I have been crying, ranting, angry, and clawing to keep my head above water, but I think I'm finally catching the quick stride.
In all the madness, I've learned I LOVE the process of writing articles, every single thing about it. I love researching and drafting the questions to ask, having an excuse to talk to such interesting people, the delight of scribbling down very real and beautiful quotes, and the process of assembling it all into an article. It is the most wonderful combination of humanity and the art of writing.
Here are 8 things I've learned in the past 4 weeks and 4 articles:
1) Do something for your articles EVERY SINGLE DAY
Dave and I were engaged for a little more than 6 months. I learned early on to make daily checklists and make at least one wedding-related phone call every day. This was the only way I could manage such a large project with so many other things happening in my life. That same discipline has kept my articles timely these past 3 weeks - not a day goes by that I'm not writing emails, calling sources, drafting questions, or writing articles. If I didn't, the swamp would suck me under and you'd never see me again.
2) Fight to own your article - but know that you won't always win
So far, my worst interview experience was with an artist (how unfortunately stereotypical). She and I went back and forth for a while about the format of the interview. She wanted email, I asked to do phone, she insisted on email. I sent her a list of 12 questions, she told me it was too long, I cut it down to 4. She ignored my questions and sent me a copy of an interview between her and someone else, and I explained why I needed original quotes. She grudgingly filled out my questionnaire, but still copied answers from her other interview for half the questions without telling me - good thing I had already read that interview and saved myself from possible plagiarism. I had to fight tooth and nail to get her to cooperate, and I lost several battles, but I got my piddly collection of original quotes, which means I won the war. The newspaper business isn't a grocery store, the customer isn't always right, and you're the one doing a good thing for them. Step up to that plate - after all, you own it. It's your byline, not theirs.
3) Email interviews are the worst
I made the mistake of telling a source that I had finished my interview questions for him before our phone call, so he fell in love with the idea of an email interview. I dug in my heels and with forceful diplomacy talked him out of it. I still had a bad taste in my mouth after my skirmish with the artist, and wasn't eager to play superficially polite email ping-pong again. But there are good reasons why in-person and phone interviews are far superior. For instance, typed responses sound wooden in an article, and aren't in the voice of the source. What email also eliminates is the flow of conversation, the natural rabbit-trails and side stories that are the real gold mines for good quotes. Also, "stated in an email" makes me wince; "said" is such a nicely personal verb in comparison.
4) Expect communication delays and rescheduling
I got lucky with my first article - a one-source story I successfully called on the first day and then wrote on the second. I already told you about my email back-and-forth with the artist. My third article had splendidly responsive sources, but there was an unexpected 9:30pm call one night from one of them. My fourth article was a barrage of time suggestions, emails, and rescheduling. But it just seems to be the nature of this beast - another reason why something MUST be done EVERY SINGLE DAY. You can't rely on timely replies and easily accessible interviewees. It's just another example of the wonderful and unpredictable humanity of writing articles.
5) More sources = more dimensions and more headaches
My first story had one source, my second had two, and my third had four. Because of that my third story is the most well-rounded of that set, but man, that's a lot of talk, and a lot of time writing questions and selecting quotes. The more ingredients you cook with, the more complicated the recipe, but often the better its taste at the end as well. I prefer the headache of many sources to the flat Dilbert-ness of a one-source story.
6) Skype is an amazing tool for interviews
So I just discovered Skype for my fourth article. How I have not gotten into this before? This tool is God's gift to journalists interviewing people outside of their present location. I had a video phone call with a source in England, and I didn't have to pay a dime for it. I get to hear his voice and see his mannerisms (a writer's delight) without any charge. Yeah, Skype is FREE. Beat that.
7) Learn how to shorten ramblers and draw out the silent type
I really hit it off with this 24-year-old entrepreneur, a source for my fourth story, and we ended up stretching the interview to 2 hours on Skype...I'll repeat that: 2 straight hours of conversation and staring at a computer screen and typing madly to keep up with his responses. An average interview for me is anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes. His ramblings did produce a leprechaun's pot of interesting information and colorful quotes...but I'm not going to be able to fit much of the ten resulting pages into my final article. In the future, I plan on setting an hour time-limit at the beginning of my interviews to save myself precious time. However, I've gotten pretty good in other areas of my life at drawing out the quiet type. But when you get someone talking about themselves, it's amazing how easy it is to get a mountain of monologues, no matter how withdrawn they are.
8) Be ready for only 10% of your sweat-pouring harvest to appear in the article
There are HOURS behind every single story. So far, I've put between 4 and 10 hours into each article, depending on the number of sources and how cooperative they are. Here's the process: I find the story idea and pitch it to my editor who (ideally) assents. I send out emails where I can and begin doing research online to figure out who else to talk to and what to ask. I go back and forth with people setting up interview times, and then finally have to sit down to spend time interviewing them in the best method available. Once all the sources have been interviewed, I go back and highlight the best quotes from my interviews, and then write a rough draft of the article. I always sleep on an article before editing it, letting my unconscious sift through the story and separating myself from my writing so I can better edit it. Then I give it to someone else to read, typically Dave, or sometimes one of my coworkers, to make sure it makes sense and is clear. And then I email it to my editor. By that point, it's usually pretty short, anywhere from 450-800 words (typically no more than 2 pages, condensed from sometimes 20 pages of notes and quotes). And then the copy editors like to go through and see if there's any fat they can further trim off, and figure out what size it needs to be to fit in the newspaper layout. All that time and work and effort is funneled down into a mere handful of paragraphs. It's maddening. It's exhilarating. I LOVE IT.
In all the madness, I've learned I LOVE the process of writing articles, every single thing about it. I love researching and drafting the questions to ask, having an excuse to talk to such interesting people, the delight of scribbling down very real and beautiful quotes, and the process of assembling it all into an article. It is the most wonderful combination of humanity and the art of writing.
Here are 8 things I've learned in the past 4 weeks and 4 articles:
1) Do something for your articles EVERY SINGLE DAY
Dave and I were engaged for a little more than 6 months. I learned early on to make daily checklists and make at least one wedding-related phone call every day. This was the only way I could manage such a large project with so many other things happening in my life. That same discipline has kept my articles timely these past 3 weeks - not a day goes by that I'm not writing emails, calling sources, drafting questions, or writing articles. If I didn't, the swamp would suck me under and you'd never see me again.
2) Fight to own your article - but know that you won't always win
So far, my worst interview experience was with an artist (how unfortunately stereotypical). She and I went back and forth for a while about the format of the interview. She wanted email, I asked to do phone, she insisted on email. I sent her a list of 12 questions, she told me it was too long, I cut it down to 4. She ignored my questions and sent me a copy of an interview between her and someone else, and I explained why I needed original quotes. She grudgingly filled out my questionnaire, but still copied answers from her other interview for half the questions without telling me - good thing I had already read that interview and saved myself from possible plagiarism. I had to fight tooth and nail to get her to cooperate, and I lost several battles, but I got my piddly collection of original quotes, which means I won the war. The newspaper business isn't a grocery store, the customer isn't always right, and you're the one doing a good thing for them. Step up to that plate - after all, you own it. It's your byline, not theirs.
3) Email interviews are the worst
I made the mistake of telling a source that I had finished my interview questions for him before our phone call, so he fell in love with the idea of an email interview. I dug in my heels and with forceful diplomacy talked him out of it. I still had a bad taste in my mouth after my skirmish with the artist, and wasn't eager to play superficially polite email ping-pong again. But there are good reasons why in-person and phone interviews are far superior. For instance, typed responses sound wooden in an article, and aren't in the voice of the source. What email also eliminates is the flow of conversation, the natural rabbit-trails and side stories that are the real gold mines for good quotes. Also, "stated in an email" makes me wince; "said" is such a nicely personal verb in comparison.
4) Expect communication delays and rescheduling
I got lucky with my first article - a one-source story I successfully called on the first day and then wrote on the second. I already told you about my email back-and-forth with the artist. My third article had splendidly responsive sources, but there was an unexpected 9:30pm call one night from one of them. My fourth article was a barrage of time suggestions, emails, and rescheduling. But it just seems to be the nature of this beast - another reason why something MUST be done EVERY SINGLE DAY. You can't rely on timely replies and easily accessible interviewees. It's just another example of the wonderful and unpredictable humanity of writing articles.
5) More sources = more dimensions and more headaches
My first story had one source, my second had two, and my third had four. Because of that my third story is the most well-rounded of that set, but man, that's a lot of talk, and a lot of time writing questions and selecting quotes. The more ingredients you cook with, the more complicated the recipe, but often the better its taste at the end as well. I prefer the headache of many sources to the flat Dilbert-ness of a one-source story.
6) Skype is an amazing tool for interviews
So I just discovered Skype for my fourth article. How I have not gotten into this before? This tool is God's gift to journalists interviewing people outside of their present location. I had a video phone call with a source in England, and I didn't have to pay a dime for it. I get to hear his voice and see his mannerisms (a writer's delight) without any charge. Yeah, Skype is FREE. Beat that.
7) Learn how to shorten ramblers and draw out the silent type
I really hit it off with this 24-year-old entrepreneur, a source for my fourth story, and we ended up stretching the interview to 2 hours on Skype...I'll repeat that: 2 straight hours of conversation and staring at a computer screen and typing madly to keep up with his responses. An average interview for me is anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes. His ramblings did produce a leprechaun's pot of interesting information and colorful quotes...but I'm not going to be able to fit much of the ten resulting pages into my final article. In the future, I plan on setting an hour time-limit at the beginning of my interviews to save myself precious time. However, I've gotten pretty good in other areas of my life at drawing out the quiet type. But when you get someone talking about themselves, it's amazing how easy it is to get a mountain of monologues, no matter how withdrawn they are.
8) Be ready for only 10% of your sweat-pouring harvest to appear in the article
There are HOURS behind every single story. So far, I've put between 4 and 10 hours into each article, depending on the number of sources and how cooperative they are. Here's the process: I find the story idea and pitch it to my editor who (ideally) assents. I send out emails where I can and begin doing research online to figure out who else to talk to and what to ask. I go back and forth with people setting up interview times, and then finally have to sit down to spend time interviewing them in the best method available. Once all the sources have been interviewed, I go back and highlight the best quotes from my interviews, and then write a rough draft of the article. I always sleep on an article before editing it, letting my unconscious sift through the story and separating myself from my writing so I can better edit it. Then I give it to someone else to read, typically Dave, or sometimes one of my coworkers, to make sure it makes sense and is clear. And then I email it to my editor. By that point, it's usually pretty short, anywhere from 450-800 words (typically no more than 2 pages, condensed from sometimes 20 pages of notes and quotes). And then the copy editors like to go through and see if there's any fat they can further trim off, and figure out what size it needs to be to fit in the newspaper layout. All that time and work and effort is funneled down into a mere handful of paragraphs. It's maddening. It's exhilarating. I LOVE IT.
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