Elevating Your Reporting Career

Wherever you are as a reporter and wherever you want to go, you can elevate your career by working on personal development. Editors, colleagues and training programs will help you move to a higher level, but nothing will help as much as your own commitment to improvement. As training consultant Alan Weiss notes, if you can improve by just 1 percent each day, you will be twice as good a journalist in 70 days.

Where do you want your career to take you?
Perhaps you want to leave your current paper and chase your dream job. Perhaps you want to get off this beat and chase a better job at this paper. Perhaps you want to grow in this beat and become the authority in this community or in our industry on this topic. Maybe you're open to any of those possibilities and more. Clarify your ambitions, at least in your own mind, and decide what steps might move you toward a goal.

Set goals.
Even if you're flexible about the paths you might take, consider where you'd like to be in a year or two or five. Look at the others who are where you want to go. What skills do they have? What experience do they have? What personal characteristics do they have? What skills, experience or personal characteristics might make you better than they are? Opportunities or changed interests might take you in different directions, but you will always benefit from setting and pursuing goals.

Improve your skills

• Develop your computer skills.
  How strong are your computer-assisted reporting skills? Have you stopped after learning a few basics, such as Internet searching and simple spreadsheets? Have you even mastered those basics? Learn a new program or a new way to use the programs you're using. Ask in each story what data sources might help tell the story. Learn what you need to know to obtain and analyze the data. If you've passed on learning many computer skills, it's time you moved into the 21st Century. You wouldn't pretend to be a complete reporter if you don't know how to search for basic paper records. Most information today is stored as data, and you need to learn how to find information to remain competent. Check out a new Web site each week: a journalism Web site or a site on your beat or a site relating to a topic you hope to master.
• Think visually.
  Your stories will get better play and win more attention from editors, colleagues and readers if you take more initiative in generating eye-catching photos and graphics. Don't let visual elements be an afterthought. As you write story proposals or discuss story ideas with your editors, discuss photo and graphic possibilities. Insist on coordinating early and often with the art, photo and design departments. However well you dig up facts and choose words, the art draws the reader's eye to your story.
• Think online.
  Early on every story, consider how to tell your story better online. Think of ways to make the online presentation interactive, to provide more detailed information online. Does the story present opportunities to use audio or data in creative ways to tell the story? Learn how you can help the online staff tell your stories better.
  
  Master numbers.
  Lots of journalists hate math and aren't very good at it. But it's important. Numbers can reveal some important stories. Reporters' incompetence with numbers can allow officials to obscure their own incompetence or malfeasance. Master budgets and tax formulas. Learn the difference between mean and median, between percent and percentage points.
• Learn another language.
  Learn Spanish or another language that immigrants in your community speak. If you learned a language in college and forgot most of it as the years passed, brush up. As our nation grows more diverse, bilingual reporters will grow increasingly valuable.
• Address a weakness.
  Assess your skills critically. Identify a weakness. Find resources to help you improve in this area. Seek criticism and suggestions from colleagues who excel at this skill. Concentrate on this skill in every story. Turn this skill into a strength.
• Work on improving one skill each story.
  You can set lofty and long-distance goals, such as wanting to become a better storyteller or wanting to become an investigative reporter. Reach those goals by setting short-term goals, such as developing characters well on today's story or diligently checking records for tomorrow's story.

Improve your reporting

• Generate your own story ideas.
  Don't just react to events or accept editors' assignments. Always have a list of stories you want to work on. Refresh the list regularly. When you cover an event, consider what follow-up angles you should pursue. You still will have to react to events. You still will want to take the good assignments that come your way and you might have to take some lame assignments as well. But you'll get fewer of the lame assignments if you're working on better stories already.
• Prospect.
  Get out of the office and "prospect" for some new sources. Drop in on someone on your beat or in your community that you don't know. Learn about her job, tell her about yours and learn how she might help you in future stories. Ask her what you should be writing about.
• Diversify your sources.
  Reporters who "round up the usual suspects" in their stories blend in with the pack. Reporters stand out when they interview sources who vary by race, ethnicity, gender, occupation and experience. You will write more lively, more interesting and more accurate stories if you diversify your sources. Recognize that experts are not just officials and scholars, but parents, residents, voters, commuters, students and consumers.
• Find the silent voices.
  Find people who are usually silent, such as sexual abuse victims, refugees or closeted gays who could lose their jobs if they spoke out. Tell their stories, even if you have to protect their identities.
• Explore your community.
  Visit a part of your community you haven't seen in a while. Or ever. Find some people to talk to who might be sources. Find some story ideas, if not for your beat, then for some colleagues.
• Spend more time with documents.
  Learn your state open-records law and the federal Freedom of Information Act. Always consider what documents might help bolster a story. Ask for private documents, too. If someone says no, consider who else might have the records you want, or whether they might be available online. On every story, ask yourself who would have some pertinent records and see if you can obtain them. They won't always add much to your story, but occasionally you'll pick up a few helpful details. Or maybe you'll uncover another story altogether.
• Follow the money.
  Learn where the agencies and organizations you cover have to file financial reports. Learn how to read them. When important decisions are made, ask who will profit from these decisions and see if you can show how they profited. See if you can show how they might have influenced the decisions. Following the money is never a waste of your time. Even if it doesn't produce a story right now, it will produce understanding that will help you in the future.
• Volunteer for the big breaking story.
  When the story of the year, or even the story of the month, breaks, ask the editors if they need any help. Even if the story is on someone else's beat or someone else has already taken the lead role, you will enjoy having a piece of the action. You will get a chance to watch some of your paper's best reporters work and a chance to learn from them. And the editors will remember how you helped. Maybe next time they will give you that leading role. Or at least a bigger supporting part.
• Do more enterprise stories.
  Even if you're on a beat with heavy daily demands, try to devote your first hour every day to making progress on an enterprise story. Show more enterprise on daily stories: Check public records or Internet resources to verify or refute claims officials make; call academic experts to provide context to a controversy.
• National context.
  You can add depth to stories by remembering to place them in a national context. Is your situation the best, worst or first in the country? Does it illustrate (or buck or lag behind) a trend? Might solutions in another city work in your city? Might problems in another community provide a warning for yours?
• Follow up.
  One of our weaknesses as a business is that we're too often hit-and-run reporters. Use your Outlook calendar or another technique to remind you to check up on stories and see how they came out.
• Write with authority.
  Reduce attribution where you can find out for sure what the facts are. Writing with authority is more a matter of reporting than writing, though. First you have to know authoritatively what the story is.
• Zig when others zag.
  When you find yourself running with the pack, take a moment to consider what the pack might be missing. If everyone is looking to the right, look to the left, at least briefly. You can usually catch up with the pack pretty quickly if you don't find an exclusive. But you won't find the exclusive without leaving the pack. Sometimes the pack is really on the big story. But if you always follow the pack, all you will have is the same story as everyone else.

Improve your writing

• Spell out story ideas.
  Don't just talk about story ideas. Write them out. A detailed proposal helps your editors start to envision the story and builds anticipation for the story. A detailed proposal also helps you start focusing the story.
• Write as you report.
  Start writing earlier in the process on each story. Write at the idea stage, after your first interview and as you go along. The writing will focus and improve the reporting that remains and you will have more time to rewrite.
• Use story elements.
  Make your story more than just a string of facts. Give it a plot, some characters, a setting, a conflict, a resolution, a climax, a theme. OK, maybe your editors won't give you enough space to develop all those elements in tomorrow's story. But decide which are the most important elements and develop those.
• Try new story forms.
  If you haven't written a narrative, watch for a story that lends itself to narration and try your hand at it. Or if you haven't done a series, consider what story on your beat demands the in-depth treatment of a series. Ask whether a particular story might lend itself to a creative approach that defies labels.
• Use quotes sparingly.
  Heavy use of quotes often is a mark of pedestrian writing. Show more confidence in your own writing. Paraphrase when you can state something better than a character. You accent your strongest quotes when they stand out from the rest of the story, rather than seeming like one in a string of weak quotes. Use quotes for dialogue, emotion or opinion, not for information.
• Read aloud.
  Read your stories aloud. You will find and fix long sentences, clunky passages, awkward phrases. You will understand the voice and flow of your story.
• Emphasize rewriting.
  Few skills are as valuable or as neglected as rewriting. If your rewriting now is a quick fact-check and a quick run through the copy to slap on a little polish, allow more time for rewriting. Go through the story one more time a bit more slowly. Challenge the verbs. Cut or paraphrase dull quotes. Condense or break up long sentences. Sharpen story elements. Spend your last few minutes before you turn the copy in raising your standards and demanding more of your work.
• Tighten your copy.
  Whether you are writing a short story or a long one, make every word count. Challenge each sentence, each word. Use strong, active verbs. If you have to cut the story, regard it as raising your standards. Yes, you could (and already did) write a terrific 30-inch story on this topic. But the editors only have room for 20 inches, so only the best 20 inches make it into this story.
• Challenge your best work.
  You don't get better just by improving your weaknesses and holding your routine stories to some minimal standards. You also have to challenge your very best stories and make them better.
• Challenge your leads.
  Always challenge your lead. Even if you love it. Especially if you love it. Ask whether you can squeeze a word out. Then another. Ask whether you can find a stronger verb, a more specific noun. Try a completely different approach. If the lead is longer than 20 words, see if you can write one that's shorter than 10. Sometimes an outstanding lead will withstand all challenges. You will feel better knowing that it did.
• Analyze your best work.
  When you write a story you're really proud of, review the techniques you used. Why did they work? How might you use the same techniques on other upcoming stories?

Be prepared

• Use the laptop when you don't have to.
  Use a laptop for some routine stories. Use it until you're thoroughly comfortable with it. Then when you need to take it on the road for a big story, editors will remember the outstanding job you did on the story, rather than all the problems you had filing.
• Get a passport.
  Your paper may never send you abroad for a big story. But get a passport anyway. You don't want that big foreign assignment to go to someone else because you don't have a current passport when your paper needs to move quickly.
• Read old clips.
  Read in your library, both the electronic library and the old clip files, about important issues and events on your beat and in your community. Your sources and readers know some of that history. Your questions and stories will reflect your greater knowledge of background and context.
• Explore the library.
  Spend a half hour in your newsroom library, finding some resources you didn't know were available and reminding yourself of some resources you had forgotten. Consider how you might use each resource in a story.
• Explore the Web.
  Poke around the Web sites of the agencies you cover and the organizations that monitor them. Learn what records are posted online and how current they are. Do some Google searches on people, organizations and issues you cover and find other sites that might be helpful.
• Read the best.
  Read the work of reporters whose work you admire. Read prize-winning stories. Analyze the writers' techniques. Consider how they got their information. Consider how they got their story ideas. Read the "Best Newspaper Writing" series, not just the winning stories themselves, but the interviews in which they say how they did it. Call or e-mail the reporters and ask about the reporting and writing techniques that produced the stories.

Be a newsroom leader

• Mentor a colleague.
  Share your advice and experience with a colleague who has less experience. You don't have to be a know-it-all. But if you see a story with a hole that you know how to fill, offer the advice in a spirit of cooperation. The colleague probably will appreciate it and your relationship will develop. Colleagues and bosses will notice this contribution to the newsroom. And you will learn from the colleague as you teach.
• Share your experience.
  Develop a workshop for your staff in a skill you have mastered. When you overcome a writing or reporting challenge of which you're proud, tell colleagues what you did, not in a boastful look-what-I-did way, but maybe you're highlighting what a jerk the source was who denied you the records. The secondary part of the story is how you got them anyway. Write up a tip sheet. Develop some points, examples and exercises to help colleagues learn the skill in a workshop. Talk to the person who is responsible for training in your newsroom and volunteer to present a workshop to your staff. Send the handout to me and I'll post it, with credit, on the Web at "No Train, No Gain."
• Pass tips to colleagues.
  When you see or hear something that would be a good story for a colleague, pass it along. They won't do all the stories you suggest, but they will appreciate the tips. Some of them will pass tips along to you, resulting in good stories for you. Pass along how-to tips as well. If you find a valuable Web site, let colleagues know. If you used a creative technique to find some information, tell a friend. Join a list-serv of colleagues who cover the same topic. When someone asks for help on a matter where you have experience, give some advice. You don't have to hold forth as though you're the fount of all wisdom. But if you share your knowledge and ideas, your respect among colleagues will grow.
• Promote yourself.
  You can tell editors and colleagues of your accomplishments without becoming annoying and boastful. If you've beaten the competition on a story, be sure to tell your editors. That may affect the play on a story and it certainly will affect their view of you. If your story forces some changes by the agency you cover, tell your editors and discuss whether the changes merit a story. Even if they don't, the editors will note the impact you've had.
• Lead in your newsroom.
  Does your newsroom have a committee that is considering newsroom reorganization or policies on issues such as technology or ethics? Serve on the committee. The work may be frustrating at times. Committees always are. And don't assume the editors will adopt all your ideas. But you can make a difference. And your leadership will be noticed. Consider other ways you can lead: perhaps by speaking up directly to editors about matters that concern you or by organizing a brownbag lunch to discuss a current issue in journalism.
• Fill in as an editor.
  If you want to become an editor someday, volunteer to fill in on the desk, on weekends or during vacations. Volunteer for a short stint on the pagination or copy desks, so you learn more about how the paper is produced and sharpen your editing skills. Even if you don't want to become an editor, a stint on the copy desk will help you develop stronger news judgment and help in editing your own copy. Either way, working the desk for a while will give you a broader view of the newsroom mission and operation.

Learn from others

• Seek a mentor.
  Look around your newsroom. Identify a colleague who has a skill, work habit or writing style that you admire and would like to emulate. Offer to take her out to lunch. Pick her brain. Learn how she developed that skill. Follow up by asking about individual stories (yours or hers) that illustrate the point you have discussed. Perhaps your mentor might be a colleague who has mastered your beat at another newspaper. Seek advice by phone and e-mail or connect in person at a workshop or conference.
• Use a writing coach.
  If your staff has a writing coach, seek advice regularly. If not, I'm always happy to consult about individual stories or about general reporting and writing challenges. I might not have the answers, but I can seek them from other colleagues or we can brainstorm together about where we might find them or about techniques you might try.
• Find a "guide" on your beat.
  The guide is not a source or at least not a primary source. The guide might be a reader or a former source on the beat. The guide still will have a perspective that you must learn and keep in mind. Any guide who knows enough to be helpful has to have biases. But the guide usually doesn't have a direct stake. Go to the guide early to learn context, background, jargon and process. Ask the guide about characters and conflicts. New issues might present or require new guides.
• Attend training programs.
  Ask your editors to send you to the regional National Writers' Workshops or regional training programs of Investigative Reporters and Editors. Even if the company won't send you, these low-cost workshops are a great investment in your own career and your own future. Watch also for national training opportunities. Don't assume your company won't send you to an expensive Poynter Institute or American Press Institute seminar. And watch for national training programs that offer fellowships that cover some or all expenses.
• Follow up on training.
  Whether you attend a National Writers' Workshop or another conference or a workshop in your newsroom, be sure to follow up. Make the training stick by deciding how you will apply the lessons to expand and improve your own skills. After the workshop, decide what points were most relevant to your current situation and what steps you need to take to improve your skills. Set your calendar to review after a month and after three months how you are doing in this improvement plan. If the workshop taught a skill that's entirely new to you, such as using an unfamiliar program for computer-assisted reporting, start using that program immediately after returning to the newsroom, or the lessons will grow stale quickly.
• Connect with other reporters.
  Join Investigative Reporters and Editors and/or an organization of reporters sharing your beat. Many journalism organizations do an excellent job of training members at annual or even regional conferences. Many operate Web sites or list-servs that help journalists connect to share ideas, seek help and learn from each other. Join the organizations or e-mail lists that look the most helpful to you. Even if your newspaper doesn't pay the costs, you should consider investing in your career by attending conferences.

  Some reporter organizations:

• Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors: http://www.capitolbeat.org/
  
• Association of Food Journalists: http://www.afjonline.com/
  
• Association of Health Care Journalists:www.healthjournalism.org
  
• Criminal Justice Journalists: http://www.reporters.net/cjj/
  
• Education Writers Association: http://www.ewa.org/
  
• Football Writers Association of America: http://www.sportswriters.net/fwaa/
  
• Investigative Reporters and Editors: http://www.ire.org/
  
• National Association of Science Writers: http://www.nasw.org/
  
• Obituary Writers: http://www.obitpage.com/
  
• Religion Newswriters Association: http://www.religionwriters.com/
  
• Society of American Business Editors and Writers: http://www.sabew.org/
  
• Society of American Travel Writers: http://www.satw.org/
  
• Society of Environmental Journalists: http://www.sej.org/
  
• U.S. Basketball Writers Association: http://www.sportswriters.net/usbwa/index.html

Pursue opportunities

• Consider a new beat.
  Maybe a new beat would give you a chance to learn and use new skills, to learn more about your community. Identify beats that might help you grow and apply for one when it comes open. Prepare yourself for that pitch by reading stories on that beat closely and by collaborating with the current reporter on a story if that's appropriate.
• Energize an old beat.
  If you've been on the beat a few years, maybe you need to energize it by approaching it like a new beat. Write up a beat coverage plan. Come up with a list of story ideas. Talk to some consumers, voters, parents or whoever the "real people" are on your beat. Learn their concerns. Ask them what you should be writing about. Find some officials or observers on your beat that you haven't met before, or haven't spent enough time with. Learn their perspective. Ask them for story ideas. Find some files you haven't examined and see if some stories might be hiding there.
• Develop your niche.
  Sometimes advancement comes not from changing positions but from elevating your position. Become the authority in your community, in your state or in the business at your beat. If you love your job, make it unthinkable to your bosses that they would ever move you. You have to beware of complacency, though, once you become the authority. Make sure you keep learning.
• Never say no for someone else.
  Your editors will tell you no sometimes - when you are seeking a new beat, when you want to become a columnist, editor or investigative reporter, when you want to do a special story or project that requires a considerable commitment of time or money, when you want to attend a national conference or training program. Sources will tell you no sometimes - when you ask tough questions or seek an interview at a difficult time or request confidential (or sometimes even public) records. Organizations will tell you no sometimes - when you seek a fellowship to a special training program or inclusion in a special program. Make them say no. Never assume you won't get the fellowship, the interview, the records, the foreign trip, the big story or the promotion. Ask or apply. Maybe they will say yes. Maybe they will say no. But they won't say yes if you don't ask.

Grow personally

• Grow.
  Even if you're experienced. However good you are, someone else is better and you can be better. Identify one way that you could improve and then identify immediate challenges to help you grow in that respect. Then do it again. And again.
• Choose your fights carefully.
  Editors tune out the reporter who's always whining about story length or assignments or whatever the reporter is whining about. Accept that no job is perfect. Analyze what's really essential for your job and carry out those tasks with little or no complaint. Weigh your story against the others that your paper will be running that day and consider how much space it's worth. If you fight only about what's really important, your complaint will carry more weight and you will win more of the really important fights.
• Be enthusiastic, candid, honest, reliable.
  Personal characteristics count. You may be a hell of a reporter. But if you whine a lot, editors will tune you out. If you give full effort only on the stories you like, editors will have justifiable doubts about you. If you lie to editors or sources, the lies will catch up to you. If you say one thing to your editor's face and something else behind his back, he will find out eventually.
• Accept responsibility.
  You will make mistakes, either errors that appear in print or stories that you miss or stories you can't nail down. Accept responsibility. Submit corrections. Tell your editors what you will do to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. Editors will remember you sense of responsibility (or your lack of responsibility) longer than they will remember the mistake.
• Apologize.
  You will offend editors, fellow reporters and sources at times with sarcasm, temper, lack of consideration or any number of other ways. Deadline pressure, difficult stories, competition and the aggressive attitude that reporting requires inevitably lead to some bruised feelings. Apologize. You don't want hard feelings to fester and hold back your career development.
• Stay positive in difficult times.
  Newsrooms go through many difficult times - hiring freezes, pay freezes, staff cuts, staff mergers, staff reorganizations, tyrannical editors, annoying corporate policies, big stories that go on for weeks and wear on everyone's nerves. Stay positive. This is fun, exciting work. Remember that. Focus on the fun. You can't ignore the unpleasant situation. But you can choose not to wallow in it.