Citizen Journalism Manual
The Largemouth SchoolThe LARGEMOUTH Citizen Journalism Manual
“Hooked by the Truth”
LARGEMOUTH is a group of professional journalists who volunteer time to listen to citizens and to teach the necessary skills to produce accurate, fair, and compelling journalism.
It is a collaborative project of the the Twin Cities Daily Planet, The Resource Center of the Americas and The McGill Report.
The LARGEMOUTH Citizen Journalism Manual What is citizen journalism? What is the goal of citizen journalism? What's the difference between a journalist and a citizen journalist? Five Steps to Becoming a Citizen Journalist Step #1 -- Decide what you want to write and who you are writing for. Step #2 -- Start by telling a short story Step #3: Explain “Why we should care” Step #4: Develop your story Step #5: Write a kicker The Importance of Reporting Interviewing People Handling Quotations Basic Journalism Resources Citizen Journalism Resources
The Largemouth Citizen Journalism Syllabus is here.
What is citizen journalism?
Since the Internet became a part of everyday life in the middle 1990s, it has played an increasingly large role in the delivery of news about the world to citizens. Instead of reading one or two daily newspapers and watching a news show on TV, most citizens today get their news from a far greater range of sources including many web sites that offer journalism in many forms. Web sites offering mainly opinion and commentary, such as “blogs” written by one person, became and remain popular. However, such blogs are often limited because they are not reports on the world – i.e., people and events seen with fresh eyes – but rather are interpretations of previously reported events according to the writers’ pre-established biases, prejudices, and political beliefs. Today, a new form of Internet journalism – citizen journalism – is taking root in which ordinary citizens are learning how to report on the people and events of the world with fresh eyes.
What is the goal of citizen journalism?
Citizen journalists offer different personal reasons for learning how to write in a journalistic format for publication on the Internet and elsewhere. But a common reason is a dissatisfaction, often quite profound, with a news media which in recent years has become alienated from the concerns of ordinary citizens. Instead, the media seems to many to have become an advertising-and-propaganda machine either pushing commercial products, or distributing crafted political messages designed to manipulate citizens to sheepishly follow elected officials in a certain way. A common goal of citizen journalists is to recapture journalism as a truly democratic practice that is thoroughly rooted in -- and thus directly serves -- the real lives and interests of citizens.
What's the difference between a journalist and a citizen journalist?
Trained journalists usually follow an ethical code of “objectivity,” which means that besides striving to be factual and fair, they also try to remain personally neutral towards the subjects they write about. Citizen journalists, while they also strive to be factual and fair, are not usually neutral on the subjects they write about, and they don’t try to be. They believe instead that the best journalism: A) is a form of popular writing grounded without compromise in verified fact; B) presents news and public issues with an articulated point of view; b) achieves fairness to the facts, to sources, and to readers by fully explaining that point of view while also offering views, ideas, and perspectives other than its own.
FIVE STEPS TO BECOMING A CITIZEN JOURNALIST
STEP #1: Decide what you want to write and who you are writing for.
You have a general idea already, most likely, but it’s a good idea to review specifically what you want to write about. Maybe it’s a public issue such as drinking water safety, the condition of local roads, the scarcity of parks and playgrounds, etc. Possibly you are already deeply engaged in social service of some kind such as children’s rights, animal welfare, elderly issues, Native American rights, etc.
If that’s so you probably feel the news media doesn’t cover this set of issues well, and you want to do it yourself. You may be planning to cover an event of some kind such as a political speech, a government meeting, a demonstration or rally. Or you may want to write an article about a specific person, such as someone you admire, an elected official, a person in the news, etc. Whatever your subject, try to describe the focus of your article in just a sentence or two: “I want to write an article about the sub-standard housing conditions for the migrant laborers who live in my community every summer.”
Next, ask yourself: “Who do I want to read this article?” Be as specific as possible: “The citizens of Mapleville. The city council, the mayor, and every city officials. The management of the Peppy Foods vegetable packing plant that employs the migrant workers – not only at the Mapleville plant but also the top brass at the company’s headquarters in Marion, NY. I also want every state senator and representative to read this piece, and the migrants as well.”
Finally, collect as many e-mails as you can of the people you want to read your story. Because once you’ve written it, you’ll send it to them!
STEP #2: Start your article by telling a brief story that illustrates the larger story.
Professional journalists call this the “anecdotal lead,” and it is the most common way to begin a piece of journalism. It can be used with many kinds of articles – profiles of individual people, trend stories, feature stories, analytical pieces, news events, and many other types. Generally it’s only a paragraph long, or two at the most. An anecdote is only a small story, a small event that in some way illustrates the larger story that you are writing about. It’s helping, in trying to find the best anecdote to start your piece, to ask yourself: “If I were at a dinner with friends and wanted to tell this story, instead of writing it, what’s the story I would start by telling?”
For example, in the case of the story about the migrant workers, I might start by telling the story of Maria, a migrant who lives in Mapleville: “One morning, Maria phoned home during her coffee break and learned that her six-year-old son was running a fever of 103 degrees. She rushed to her boss for permission to drive her child to the hospital, but instead was coldly told: ‘Don’t bother coming back if you leave, because you won’t have a job waiting for you.’”
That little anecdote could be a good lead for an article about poor working conditions and lack of human rights for Mexican migrants working at the local vegetable canning plant in Mapleville.
STEP #3: Explain "why we should care."
This section is what professional journalists call the “nut” or the “nut paragraph.” It is where the journalist explains the wider significance of the small anecdote that started the story for the whole community, state, nation, or whatever is the article’s full context. It’s usually a paragraph long, or two at the most. In addition to showing the lead anecdote’s larger significance, the nut paragraph also often includes brief allusions to important parts of the story ahead. For that reason, the nut paragraph is sometimes also called the “billboard paragraph,” because it gives readers quick highlights of the article to come.
For an investigative story about migrant workers at the local cannery, the two-paragraph story “nut’ might read something like this:
“Maria’s story is one of dozens of nearly identical tales told by seasonal workers at the Peppy Foods plant in Mapleville, and at the company’s sixteen other food-packing plants throughout the Midwest. In interviews with more than three dozen workers, a picture emerged of a company that routinely exposes its seasonal workers to hazardous working conditions even while it denies them access to medical care, affordable housing, and a minimum hourly wage.
“In the most egregious case of abuse, one Mexican worker, according to county health records obtained yesterday, died after complaining of headaches but was forced to continue working until he collapsed. State legislators say this case and dozens of others documented by Migrant Rights International, a human rights group, are certain to influence a controversial “illegal immigration” bill that is supported by Governor Tim Plenty and scheduled for a vote this week.”
STEP #4: Develop your story.
This is the most free-form and varied part of journalistic articles. Pick up a newspaper or news magazine and peruse a few pieces to see how many different ways writers develop their stories. Whatever their form, however, the middle section of stories always must support the statements and allegations made in the “lead” and “nut graf” sections.
In addition, when you boil it down, the middle section of nearly all journalistic stories are all built from three building blocks which are: 1) Anecdotes, 2) Quotes, and 3) Statistics. And the three most common ways to organize the middle sections are roughly as follows: 1. Anecdote, Quote, Statistic -- Tell an anecdote (one paragraph), give a quote (another paragraph), give just one or two carefully chosen statistics (a one-sentence paragraph). Repeat, repeat, repeat, all the way to the end.
2. Paraphrase-Quote – Let’s say you have three quotes from a key interview that are colorful, each different from the another, and each of them making a key point. A good way to handle this is, in a one- or two-sentence section ahead of each quote, to paraphrase what your source said in your own words. Follow this paragraph-long paraphrase with a paragraph that contains the person’s quote. You have just created a two-paragraph block of text, the first being a paraphrase of the source’s quote, and the second being the quote itself. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
3. Bricks & Pillows – In this popular writer’s tip, “bricks” stand for statistics, numbers, or a paragraph of dense logical reasoning or dry-but-necessary description. “Pillows” meanwhile stands for a colorful quotation, a funny or compelling story, or something else that emotionally fun or rewarding and not intellectually taxing. The idea is to alternate -- a paragraph of brick, then a paragraph of pillow. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
STEP #5: Write a kicker.
A “kicker” is journalism lingo for the last paragraph or two of a story. It wraps up the story in an aesthetically and emotionally pleasing way.
The best way to learn to write kickers is to read lots of stories to see how other journalists do it. When you write a kicker, you have gotten to a point in writing the piece where you feel you’ve emptied your notebook and your mind. You’ve reported what you needed to report, and you’ve said what you needed to say. Now you can stop, clear your mind of everything, and just tell a last little anecdote.
Like the lead anecdote, this one should have some symbolic resonance with the whole story. Play around until you find one. A survey of successful kickers shows the following frequent characteristics in their writing: 1. Super quotes – The most common successful kicker is memorable quote, especially one that creates a strong mental picture that restates the story’s main theme in a fresh way.
2. Author’s language (as opposed to a quote) that restates the story’s main theme in a fresh way.
3. A question, in either a quote or the author’s language, that applies one last turn of the story’s main theme and opens it imaginatively to a new line of speculation or questioning.
4. A phrase that lightly strikes or echoes a phrase or theme from the story’s lead.
5. Phrases that evoke or directly mention endings, beginnings, continuity or finality, births, deaths, etc.
The Importance of Reporting
The key to good citizen journalism is reporting – bringing to readers ever-more-accurate descriptions of the world around us. The basic building block of such reportage is facts, i.e. verified observations.
In this sense, journalism is fundamentally distinct not only from fictional writing but also from persuasive writing, which is increasingly the dominant mode of media communication today and includes political speeches, talk shows, press releases, advertisements, special-section newspaper articles (“Home,” “Style,” etc.), and most of the writing on personal web logs or “blogs” on the Internet.
The promise of real journalism therefore is that it gives readers and viewers not a fantasy, a vacation, a pitch, or an argument, but a factually-grounded report. A report should make the reader feel that he knows more about the world and how it works, and that he can therefore use that information to become a better citizen and person.
In this sense, a potential pitfall for beginning citizen journalists is precisely the pre-existing beliefs they have about the civic and personal issues that matter to them most. They will have a natural and precious desire to share their experience, their knowledge, and their passion for peace and justice and democracy with others.
But the very strength of these beliefs can be a problem if the citizen journalist doesn’t remember that it’s always her first job to report as opposed to argue or give opinions. Reporting means observing the world and listening to the views of others with an open mind, and then reporting those observations and views as accurately as possible.
This does not mean that a journalist – professional or citizen – should not have a point-of-view. To the contrary, a point-of-view is necessary in order to shape the facts gathered in your reporting. A point-of-view can include opinions but is always much larger than that, including everything about you that is relevant to the article you are writing. So depending on the article, the point-of-view you need to explain to your readers may include the neighborhood, city, or state where you live, the place you grew up, your economic status, your race, your professional affiliations, your gender, your hobbies, etc.
Your personal opinions, beliefs, and emotional feelings are often so strongly felt that they seem to be co-equal, or even larger than, your point-of-view. But from the reader’s perspective, they never are. From the reader’s perspective, your personal opinions and feelings are only a small part of the much larger perspective from which you write.
Therefore, no matter how strong your opinions and feelings, your first priority as a journalist is to subordinate them to point-of-view. Not to erase them, which would be impossible and undesirable, but simply to subordinate them to the much larger and more important needs of the reader and of the world. Reader want, expect, and deserve that.
F or every article you write, then, prepare yourself to go out into the world to observe and listen carefully, with an open heart and mind.
Subordinate your own emotions and beliefs to what you see and hear, then record your observations as accurately as you can. A kind of humility is needed. You and your readers both know that your point-of-view will shape everything you observe and report. So don’t pretend you are being “objective,” everyone knows you can’t be. Rather, divulge your point-of-view humbly – including your opinions if they are relevant -- as part of your best attempt to accurately record what you observe as a journalist. That’s the best you can do.
Interviewing People
For some citizen journalists, the biggest hurdle is simply approaching other people for an interview. Saying “Hi, I’m Sandy, I’m writing an article about autism for my online newsletter, can I ask you a few questions?” It’s not a role many of us have practice in.
My advice is to grow out of your comfort zone step by step. If you initially feel uncomfortable asking people for interviews, don’t pick a senator or a CEO or a senator for your first interview. Pick someone who feels safer but also someone who, once they say yes and give you the interview, will definitely expand your confidence and lay the groundwork for more ambitious interviews ahead. Ultimately – this is part of the magic of journalism – there is literally no one in society you could not approach in all sincerity to ask for an interview.
Broadly speaking, journalists mine the raw data for their stories from three sources -- pure observation, documents (writing, audio and video tapes, web sites, etc.), and interviews. But of these, interviews are the most fundamental. Listening to other people answer your questions and tell their stories is the way you get your story.
Here are ten interview guidelines to keep in mind:
1. Prepare. Learn as much as you can in the time allowed about the person you will interview, including personal details, and the subject you are writing about. Then draw up a list of the specific questions you plan to ask, in the order you plan to ask them. Make your list of questions follow a kind of arc or plot, so that the interview will have some form to it. You can organize questions along "plot lines" so they are chronological, thematic, analytical, etc.
2. Be at your top form in interviews. In other words, an interview is when you need to be most alert, most informed, and most engaged. Proritize accordingly. Prepare yourself physically and mentally towards this goal. If things go well in your interviews, everything will go well in your stories - you will learn vital information, get good quotes, create a good new source, and so on. By contrast, if things go poorly in the interview everything will go wrong - your story will be inaccurate (which leads to endless more trouble), uninteresting, you lose readers and make enemies.
3. Be forthright and direct. Interviews are all about building trust with your sources, no matter how short or long the interviews are. The best way to build trust, besides preparing in the two ways mentioned above, is to be forthright and direct in the interview. People often have a bad image of journalists. They think that what they say will be taken out of context, skewed, even misquoted. By being forthright and direct, you reassure your sources otherwise and make them understand that you will listen carefully, including to their misgivings, and that they are in control at all times.
4. Explain yourself. Immediately give your name and say who you are writing for.
5. Ask if you can ask some questions. Next, explain the story you are reporting. "I'm writing a story about the campus robbery last night." "I'm doing a story about international transfer students to St. Thomas." "Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?"
6. Eplain you want to understand their point of view. If you say that you are writing a story about, say, the Mayor's new policy about immunizing people against Monkey Pox, you might tell your source: "I understand that you have written an academic paper arguing that Monkey Pox isn't a serious enough health threat to justify mass inoculations. It would be important to reflect that point of view in my story, could I ask you to elaborate?"
7. Go in with a specific story idea but be prepared to change it. This is critical. Having a fairly clear idea of what your story is about is important to let your sources know you are knowledgeable, focused, and professional. At the same time, they won't talk to you if they think you aren't really listening to understand their point of view. You have to be ready - indeed, eager - to listen to what they have to say and to change your own viewpoint after you have listened as deeply and thoroughly as you can to them.
8. Say "Please help me understand."
9. Listen for quotes, and listen for information. These are the two things you are always going for in an interview. Always know, in your own mind, which of the two you are going for primarily during an interview. Of course, you are always listening for both, but most of the time you are leaning heavily toward one or the other. The most important thing you can do as a reporter on a story is to understand what your source is trying to tell you. This is a matter of listening for information. Sometimes you may say to him or her, "Feel free to go off the record and please just explain to me what this is all about." A person may well relax at that point and give you the information you need. Another time, when you feel you understand the basic story well enough, you can tune your ear to quotes more, and ask questions that are designed more to elicit quotes than information."
10. Shut up and listen. The most powerful and important practice in the world - not to mention journalism -- is listening. Learn how to ask good questions and then be quiet and let your source tell you what he or she wants.
Handling Quotations
Quotations are sacrosanct in journalism.
Those four little squiggles -- “ ” – announce something very important to readers. They say: “A person is speaking here and these are the exact words that the person said.”
Paragraph marks do not say to the reader “These are close to the exact words, with some words changed by the author for effect.” Rather they say: “These are the exact words the person said.”
It’s important to handle quotations with special care because more than in any other part of your articles, a quotation is where a person is exposed and thus most vulnerable to readers. His or her reputation is very much on the line with a quotation, because the quotation marks say those words are the person’s exact words.
Professional journalists disagree on whether you can change or delete grammatical errors, ums and ahs, and certain other parts of speech in a quote. There is a fair amount of hypocrisy in newsrooms on this question as many journalistic institutions say in their guidelines or stylebooks that not a word or letter can be changed in a quote, while their copy editors meanwhile routinely clean quotes of grammatical errors, gratuitous and duplicative speech, etc.
My view is that changing ungrammatical to grammatical English, such as when recent immigrants still learning the language are quoted, is perfectly okay and usually serves both the person quoted and readers. The same applies to deleting ums and ahs. Much more than that, however, gets you into a gray zone. Especially unacceptable is filling in a word where a source might have gone silent, or changing one word to another that you as the author think is more accurate or relevant. In some cases, if you feel the source unwittingly misspoke, and it’s critical to the story to correct or clarify it, you need to call the source back and directly say “You said X in your interview with me. Did you mean to say that, or did you mean to say Y?” If the source asks you to change the quote, then you may. Otherwise, not.
The other thing about quotes is to be consistent with punctuation. The best thing is to look at professionally edited journalism to see how it is done. In general, a few basic rules are followed: 1. When you start a quotation, start a new paragraph. 2. A one-sentence quotation usually works fine as a paragraph. 3. Place a comma after the first phrase, or after the first sentence if it is a short sentence. Yes: “The market went like a yo-yo today,” said Evelyn Smith, a trader for Baring securities. “Everybody got whiplash.” No: “The market went like a yo-yo today. Everybody got whiplash,” said Evelyn Smith, a trader for Baring Securities. 4. Almost always stick with “said” after a quote. Using other words such as “grumbled Evelyn Smith,” “laughed Evelyn Smith,” etc., looks like gratuitous interpretation and overwriting, which it is. Let the quote itself paint the picture and do all the talking. 5. Avoid lead-ins. Yes: “Consumption is a treatable disease,” Kalman said. No: Kalman said, “Consumption is a treatable disease.”
Basic JournalismResources 1. The Associated Press Stylebook Is it 4 am, 4 AM, 4 A.M., 4 a.m., or 4 o’clock in the morning? “The president is on TV” or “The President is on TV?” “Fly fishing” or “fly-fishing?” The AP Stylebook answers all such questions, giving instructions as well on punctuations, acronyms, usage, and much else. Style is the spit-and-polish of writing. It doesn’t take much to get right – all you need to do is refer to the book. In return for that, you automatically get a certain level of credibility and respect. The subliminal message to readers is “The writer is paying attention to the smallest details.” The AP Stylebook is also the one used by most newspapers and magazines used in the United States. 2. The Elements of Style The best good writing guide ever written. Shunned as elitist by some – it is, no doubt, idiosyncratically prescriptive in places – and by now dated here and there, it nevertheless was penned by two masters of English prose, William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. It focuses on the few eternal guidelines – e.g., omit needless words, use the active voice – and models its own advice to value clarity above all else in writing and to keep things brief. 3. News Reporting and Writing The most popular college journalism textbook, written by Melvin Mencher, a legendary teacher at Columbia University. An excellent introduction to professional journalistic practices and ethics. 4. Discovering the News By Michael Schudson. The best single-volume history of American journalism, especially on the development of the professional journalistic code of “objectivity,” its strengths and weaknesses. 5. The Nieman Narrative Digest Literary news writing is often the best way to describe the modern landscape and the place of the human being within it, argues Mark Kramer, a leading non-fiction narrative writer and organizer of the annual Nieman Conference of Narrative Journalism at Harvard University. The Nieman Narrative Digest archives examples of the genre at: http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/narrative/digest 6. Poynter Online The leading journalism coaches Roy Peter Clark and Chip Scanlan archive their acute writing and reporting advice here: www.poynter.org
Citizen Journalism Online Resources
Minnesota: The Twin Cities Daily Planet www.tcdailyplanet.com This web site aggregates articles from the local neighborhood, ethnic, and alternative press. Northfield.org www.northfield.org A group of citizens in Northfield, MN maintains this web site with daily news about the city’s schools, roads, government, and happenings along with regular postings from city officials and others. The Glocalist www.glocalist.org Publishes stories by Minnesota citizens describing their local communities from an international perspective. National: Voice of San Diego http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/ One of the most substantial U.S. citizen-written news sites. The Columbia Record http://www.thecolumbiarecord.com/ This web site from Columbia, SC, offers citizens “a place where they can define what constitutes ‘news’ in their neighborhoods, their schools, their churches, their lives.” Backfence.org www.backfence.com A community information network linking citizen-written websites from Maryland, Virginia, and California. Bayosphere http://www.bayosphere.com/blog/dangillmor One of the leading theorists and proponents of citizen journalism, Dan Gillmor, blogs here. International: OhMy News http://english.ohmynews.com/ One of the first and most successful citizen journalism web sites, based in South Korea, OhMy’s thousands of citizen journalists have changed the outcome of national elections. Global Voices Online http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/ Dozens of bloggers from around the world contribute to this web site that’s carefully edited to select only credible and substantive posts. General: Citizen Media Monitor http://www.cyberjournalist.net/citizen_media_monitor Maintains links to the latest news and developments in the citizen journalism world, from the Online News Association. PressThink www.pressthink.org This web site by New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen contains weekly exploratory essays on the state of journalism from a civic journalist’s perspective. New Voices http://www.j-newvoices.org/ Seed grants for citizen journalism start-ups are offered through this program funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Copyright @ Douglas McGill 2006
“Hooked by the Truth”
LARGEMOUTH is a group of professional journalists who volunteer time to listen to citizens and to teach the necessary skills to produce accurate, fair, and compelling journalism.
It is a collaborative project of the the Twin Cities Daily Planet, The Resource Center of the Americas and The McGill Report.
The LARGEMOUTH Citizen Journalism Manual What is citizen journalism? What is the goal of citizen journalism? What's the difference between a journalist and a citizen journalist? Five Steps to Becoming a Citizen Journalist Step #1 -- Decide what you want to write and who you are writing for. Step #2 -- Start by telling a short story Step #3: Explain “Why we should care” Step #4: Develop your story Step #5: Write a kicker The Importance of Reporting Interviewing People Handling Quotations Basic Journalism Resources Citizen Journalism Resources
The Largemouth Citizen Journalism Syllabus is here.
What is citizen journalism?
Since the Internet became a part of everyday life in the middle 1990s, it has played an increasingly large role in the delivery of news about the world to citizens. Instead of reading one or two daily newspapers and watching a news show on TV, most citizens today get their news from a far greater range of sources including many web sites that offer journalism in many forms. Web sites offering mainly opinion and commentary, such as “blogs” written by one person, became and remain popular. However, such blogs are often limited because they are not reports on the world – i.e., people and events seen with fresh eyes – but rather are interpretations of previously reported events according to the writers’ pre-established biases, prejudices, and political beliefs. Today, a new form of Internet journalism – citizen journalism – is taking root in which ordinary citizens are learning how to report on the people and events of the world with fresh eyes.
What is the goal of citizen journalism?
Citizen journalists offer different personal reasons for learning how to write in a journalistic format for publication on the Internet and elsewhere. But a common reason is a dissatisfaction, often quite profound, with a news media which in recent years has become alienated from the concerns of ordinary citizens. Instead, the media seems to many to have become an advertising-and-propaganda machine either pushing commercial products, or distributing crafted political messages designed to manipulate citizens to sheepishly follow elected officials in a certain way. A common goal of citizen journalists is to recapture journalism as a truly democratic practice that is thoroughly rooted in -- and thus directly serves -- the real lives and interests of citizens.
What's the difference between a journalist and a citizen journalist?
Trained journalists usually follow an ethical code of “objectivity,” which means that besides striving to be factual and fair, they also try to remain personally neutral towards the subjects they write about. Citizen journalists, while they also strive to be factual and fair, are not usually neutral on the subjects they write about, and they don’t try to be. They believe instead that the best journalism: A) is a form of popular writing grounded without compromise in verified fact; B) presents news and public issues with an articulated point of view; b) achieves fairness to the facts, to sources, and to readers by fully explaining that point of view while also offering views, ideas, and perspectives other than its own.
FIVE STEPS TO BECOMING A CITIZEN JOURNALIST
STEP #1: Decide what you want to write and who you are writing for.
You have a general idea already, most likely, but it’s a good idea to review specifically what you want to write about. Maybe it’s a public issue such as drinking water safety, the condition of local roads, the scarcity of parks and playgrounds, etc. Possibly you are already deeply engaged in social service of some kind such as children’s rights, animal welfare, elderly issues, Native American rights, etc.
If that’s so you probably feel the news media doesn’t cover this set of issues well, and you want to do it yourself. You may be planning to cover an event of some kind such as a political speech, a government meeting, a demonstration or rally. Or you may want to write an article about a specific person, such as someone you admire, an elected official, a person in the news, etc. Whatever your subject, try to describe the focus of your article in just a sentence or two: “I want to write an article about the sub-standard housing conditions for the migrant laborers who live in my community every summer.”
Next, ask yourself: “Who do I want to read this article?” Be as specific as possible: “The citizens of Mapleville. The city council, the mayor, and every city officials. The management of the Peppy Foods vegetable packing plant that employs the migrant workers – not only at the Mapleville plant but also the top brass at the company’s headquarters in Marion, NY. I also want every state senator and representative to read this piece, and the migrants as well.”
Finally, collect as many e-mails as you can of the people you want to read your story. Because once you’ve written it, you’ll send it to them!
STEP #2: Start your article by telling a brief story that illustrates the larger story.
Professional journalists call this the “anecdotal lead,” and it is the most common way to begin a piece of journalism. It can be used with many kinds of articles – profiles of individual people, trend stories, feature stories, analytical pieces, news events, and many other types. Generally it’s only a paragraph long, or two at the most. An anecdote is only a small story, a small event that in some way illustrates the larger story that you are writing about. It’s helping, in trying to find the best anecdote to start your piece, to ask yourself: “If I were at a dinner with friends and wanted to tell this story, instead of writing it, what’s the story I would start by telling?”
For example, in the case of the story about the migrant workers, I might start by telling the story of Maria, a migrant who lives in Mapleville: “One morning, Maria phoned home during her coffee break and learned that her six-year-old son was running a fever of 103 degrees. She rushed to her boss for permission to drive her child to the hospital, but instead was coldly told: ‘Don’t bother coming back if you leave, because you won’t have a job waiting for you.’”
That little anecdote could be a good lead for an article about poor working conditions and lack of human rights for Mexican migrants working at the local vegetable canning plant in Mapleville.
STEP #3: Explain "why we should care."
This section is what professional journalists call the “nut” or the “nut paragraph.” It is where the journalist explains the wider significance of the small anecdote that started the story for the whole community, state, nation, or whatever is the article’s full context. It’s usually a paragraph long, or two at the most. In addition to showing the lead anecdote’s larger significance, the nut paragraph also often includes brief allusions to important parts of the story ahead. For that reason, the nut paragraph is sometimes also called the “billboard paragraph,” because it gives readers quick highlights of the article to come.
For an investigative story about migrant workers at the local cannery, the two-paragraph story “nut’ might read something like this:
“Maria’s story is one of dozens of nearly identical tales told by seasonal workers at the Peppy Foods plant in Mapleville, and at the company’s sixteen other food-packing plants throughout the Midwest. In interviews with more than three dozen workers, a picture emerged of a company that routinely exposes its seasonal workers to hazardous working conditions even while it denies them access to medical care, affordable housing, and a minimum hourly wage.
“In the most egregious case of abuse, one Mexican worker, according to county health records obtained yesterday, died after complaining of headaches but was forced to continue working until he collapsed. State legislators say this case and dozens of others documented by Migrant Rights International, a human rights group, are certain to influence a controversial “illegal immigration” bill that is supported by Governor Tim Plenty and scheduled for a vote this week.”
STEP #4: Develop your story.
This is the most free-form and varied part of journalistic articles. Pick up a newspaper or news magazine and peruse a few pieces to see how many different ways writers develop their stories. Whatever their form, however, the middle section of stories always must support the statements and allegations made in the “lead” and “nut graf” sections.
In addition, when you boil it down, the middle section of nearly all journalistic stories are all built from three building blocks which are: 1) Anecdotes, 2) Quotes, and 3) Statistics. And the three most common ways to organize the middle sections are roughly as follows: 1. Anecdote, Quote, Statistic -- Tell an anecdote (one paragraph), give a quote (another paragraph), give just one or two carefully chosen statistics (a one-sentence paragraph). Repeat, repeat, repeat, all the way to the end.
2. Paraphrase-Quote – Let’s say you have three quotes from a key interview that are colorful, each different from the another, and each of them making a key point. A good way to handle this is, in a one- or two-sentence section ahead of each quote, to paraphrase what your source said in your own words. Follow this paragraph-long paraphrase with a paragraph that contains the person’s quote. You have just created a two-paragraph block of text, the first being a paraphrase of the source’s quote, and the second being the quote itself. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
3. Bricks & Pillows – In this popular writer’s tip, “bricks” stand for statistics, numbers, or a paragraph of dense logical reasoning or dry-but-necessary description. “Pillows” meanwhile stands for a colorful quotation, a funny or compelling story, or something else that emotionally fun or rewarding and not intellectually taxing. The idea is to alternate -- a paragraph of brick, then a paragraph of pillow. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
STEP #5: Write a kicker.
A “kicker” is journalism lingo for the last paragraph or two of a story. It wraps up the story in an aesthetically and emotionally pleasing way.
The best way to learn to write kickers is to read lots of stories to see how other journalists do it. When you write a kicker, you have gotten to a point in writing the piece where you feel you’ve emptied your notebook and your mind. You’ve reported what you needed to report, and you’ve said what you needed to say. Now you can stop, clear your mind of everything, and just tell a last little anecdote.
Like the lead anecdote, this one should have some symbolic resonance with the whole story. Play around until you find one. A survey of successful kickers shows the following frequent characteristics in their writing: 1. Super quotes – The most common successful kicker is memorable quote, especially one that creates a strong mental picture that restates the story’s main theme in a fresh way.
2. Author’s language (as opposed to a quote) that restates the story’s main theme in a fresh way.
3. A question, in either a quote or the author’s language, that applies one last turn of the story’s main theme and opens it imaginatively to a new line of speculation or questioning.
4. A phrase that lightly strikes or echoes a phrase or theme from the story’s lead.
5. Phrases that evoke or directly mention endings, beginnings, continuity or finality, births, deaths, etc.
The Importance of Reporting
The key to good citizen journalism is reporting – bringing to readers ever-more-accurate descriptions of the world around us. The basic building block of such reportage is facts, i.e. verified observations.
In this sense, journalism is fundamentally distinct not only from fictional writing but also from persuasive writing, which is increasingly the dominant mode of media communication today and includes political speeches, talk shows, press releases, advertisements, special-section newspaper articles (“Home,” “Style,” etc.), and most of the writing on personal web logs or “blogs” on the Internet.
The promise of real journalism therefore is that it gives readers and viewers not a fantasy, a vacation, a pitch, or an argument, but a factually-grounded report. A report should make the reader feel that he knows more about the world and how it works, and that he can therefore use that information to become a better citizen and person.
In this sense, a potential pitfall for beginning citizen journalists is precisely the pre-existing beliefs they have about the civic and personal issues that matter to them most. They will have a natural and precious desire to share their experience, their knowledge, and their passion for peace and justice and democracy with others.
But the very strength of these beliefs can be a problem if the citizen journalist doesn’t remember that it’s always her first job to report as opposed to argue or give opinions. Reporting means observing the world and listening to the views of others with an open mind, and then reporting those observations and views as accurately as possible.
This does not mean that a journalist – professional or citizen – should not have a point-of-view. To the contrary, a point-of-view is necessary in order to shape the facts gathered in your reporting. A point-of-view can include opinions but is always much larger than that, including everything about you that is relevant to the article you are writing. So depending on the article, the point-of-view you need to explain to your readers may include the neighborhood, city, or state where you live, the place you grew up, your economic status, your race, your professional affiliations, your gender, your hobbies, etc.
Your personal opinions, beliefs, and emotional feelings are often so strongly felt that they seem to be co-equal, or even larger than, your point-of-view. But from the reader’s perspective, they never are. From the reader’s perspective, your personal opinions and feelings are only a small part of the much larger perspective from which you write.
Therefore, no matter how strong your opinions and feelings, your first priority as a journalist is to subordinate them to point-of-view. Not to erase them, which would be impossible and undesirable, but simply to subordinate them to the much larger and more important needs of the reader and of the world. Reader want, expect, and deserve that.
F or every article you write, then, prepare yourself to go out into the world to observe and listen carefully, with an open heart and mind.
Subordinate your own emotions and beliefs to what you see and hear, then record your observations as accurately as you can. A kind of humility is needed. You and your readers both know that your point-of-view will shape everything you observe and report. So don’t pretend you are being “objective,” everyone knows you can’t be. Rather, divulge your point-of-view humbly – including your opinions if they are relevant -- as part of your best attempt to accurately record what you observe as a journalist. That’s the best you can do.
Interviewing People
For some citizen journalists, the biggest hurdle is simply approaching other people for an interview. Saying “Hi, I’m Sandy, I’m writing an article about autism for my online newsletter, can I ask you a few questions?” It’s not a role many of us have practice in.
My advice is to grow out of your comfort zone step by step. If you initially feel uncomfortable asking people for interviews, don’t pick a senator or a CEO or a senator for your first interview. Pick someone who feels safer but also someone who, once they say yes and give you the interview, will definitely expand your confidence and lay the groundwork for more ambitious interviews ahead. Ultimately – this is part of the magic of journalism – there is literally no one in society you could not approach in all sincerity to ask for an interview.
Broadly speaking, journalists mine the raw data for their stories from three sources -- pure observation, documents (writing, audio and video tapes, web sites, etc.), and interviews. But of these, interviews are the most fundamental. Listening to other people answer your questions and tell their stories is the way you get your story.
Here are ten interview guidelines to keep in mind:
1. Prepare. Learn as much as you can in the time allowed about the person you will interview, including personal details, and the subject you are writing about. Then draw up a list of the specific questions you plan to ask, in the order you plan to ask them. Make your list of questions follow a kind of arc or plot, so that the interview will have some form to it. You can organize questions along "plot lines" so they are chronological, thematic, analytical, etc.
2. Be at your top form in interviews. In other words, an interview is when you need to be most alert, most informed, and most engaged. Proritize accordingly. Prepare yourself physically and mentally towards this goal. If things go well in your interviews, everything will go well in your stories - you will learn vital information, get good quotes, create a good new source, and so on. By contrast, if things go poorly in the interview everything will go wrong - your story will be inaccurate (which leads to endless more trouble), uninteresting, you lose readers and make enemies.
3. Be forthright and direct. Interviews are all about building trust with your sources, no matter how short or long the interviews are. The best way to build trust, besides preparing in the two ways mentioned above, is to be forthright and direct in the interview. People often have a bad image of journalists. They think that what they say will be taken out of context, skewed, even misquoted. By being forthright and direct, you reassure your sources otherwise and make them understand that you will listen carefully, including to their misgivings, and that they are in control at all times.
4. Explain yourself. Immediately give your name and say who you are writing for.
5. Ask if you can ask some questions. Next, explain the story you are reporting. "I'm writing a story about the campus robbery last night." "I'm doing a story about international transfer students to St. Thomas." "Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?"
6. Eplain you want to understand their point of view. If you say that you are writing a story about, say, the Mayor's new policy about immunizing people against Monkey Pox, you might tell your source: "I understand that you have written an academic paper arguing that Monkey Pox isn't a serious enough health threat to justify mass inoculations. It would be important to reflect that point of view in my story, could I ask you to elaborate?"
7. Go in with a specific story idea but be prepared to change it. This is critical. Having a fairly clear idea of what your story is about is important to let your sources know you are knowledgeable, focused, and professional. At the same time, they won't talk to you if they think you aren't really listening to understand their point of view. You have to be ready - indeed, eager - to listen to what they have to say and to change your own viewpoint after you have listened as deeply and thoroughly as you can to them.
8. Say "Please help me understand."
9. Listen for quotes, and listen for information. These are the two things you are always going for in an interview. Always know, in your own mind, which of the two you are going for primarily during an interview. Of course, you are always listening for both, but most of the time you are leaning heavily toward one or the other. The most important thing you can do as a reporter on a story is to understand what your source is trying to tell you. This is a matter of listening for information. Sometimes you may say to him or her, "Feel free to go off the record and please just explain to me what this is all about." A person may well relax at that point and give you the information you need. Another time, when you feel you understand the basic story well enough, you can tune your ear to quotes more, and ask questions that are designed more to elicit quotes than information."
10. Shut up and listen. The most powerful and important practice in the world - not to mention journalism -- is listening. Learn how to ask good questions and then be quiet and let your source tell you what he or she wants.
Handling Quotations
Quotations are sacrosanct in journalism.
Those four little squiggles -- “ ” – announce something very important to readers. They say: “A person is speaking here and these are the exact words that the person said.”
Paragraph marks do not say to the reader “These are close to the exact words, with some words changed by the author for effect.” Rather they say: “These are the exact words the person said.”
It’s important to handle quotations with special care because more than in any other part of your articles, a quotation is where a person is exposed and thus most vulnerable to readers. His or her reputation is very much on the line with a quotation, because the quotation marks say those words are the person’s exact words.
Professional journalists disagree on whether you can change or delete grammatical errors, ums and ahs, and certain other parts of speech in a quote. There is a fair amount of hypocrisy in newsrooms on this question as many journalistic institutions say in their guidelines or stylebooks that not a word or letter can be changed in a quote, while their copy editors meanwhile routinely clean quotes of grammatical errors, gratuitous and duplicative speech, etc.
My view is that changing ungrammatical to grammatical English, such as when recent immigrants still learning the language are quoted, is perfectly okay and usually serves both the person quoted and readers. The same applies to deleting ums and ahs. Much more than that, however, gets you into a gray zone. Especially unacceptable is filling in a word where a source might have gone silent, or changing one word to another that you as the author think is more accurate or relevant. In some cases, if you feel the source unwittingly misspoke, and it’s critical to the story to correct or clarify it, you need to call the source back and directly say “You said X in your interview with me. Did you mean to say that, or did you mean to say Y?” If the source asks you to change the quote, then you may. Otherwise, not.
The other thing about quotes is to be consistent with punctuation. The best thing is to look at professionally edited journalism to see how it is done. In general, a few basic rules are followed: 1. When you start a quotation, start a new paragraph. 2. A one-sentence quotation usually works fine as a paragraph. 3. Place a comma after the first phrase, or after the first sentence if it is a short sentence. Yes: “The market went like a yo-yo today,” said Evelyn Smith, a trader for Baring securities. “Everybody got whiplash.” No: “The market went like a yo-yo today. Everybody got whiplash,” said Evelyn Smith, a trader for Baring Securities. 4. Almost always stick with “said” after a quote. Using other words such as “grumbled Evelyn Smith,” “laughed Evelyn Smith,” etc., looks like gratuitous interpretation and overwriting, which it is. Let the quote itself paint the picture and do all the talking. 5. Avoid lead-ins. Yes: “Consumption is a treatable disease,” Kalman said. No: Kalman said, “Consumption is a treatable disease.”
Basic JournalismResources 1. The Associated Press Stylebook Is it 4 am, 4 AM, 4 A.M., 4 a.m., or 4 o’clock in the morning? “The president is on TV” or “The President is on TV?” “Fly fishing” or “fly-fishing?” The AP Stylebook answers all such questions, giving instructions as well on punctuations, acronyms, usage, and much else. Style is the spit-and-polish of writing. It doesn’t take much to get right – all you need to do is refer to the book. In return for that, you automatically get a certain level of credibility and respect. The subliminal message to readers is “The writer is paying attention to the smallest details.” The AP Stylebook is also the one used by most newspapers and magazines used in the United States. 2. The Elements of Style The best good writing guide ever written. Shunned as elitist by some – it is, no doubt, idiosyncratically prescriptive in places – and by now dated here and there, it nevertheless was penned by two masters of English prose, William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. It focuses on the few eternal guidelines – e.g., omit needless words, use the active voice – and models its own advice to value clarity above all else in writing and to keep things brief. 3. News Reporting and Writing The most popular college journalism textbook, written by Melvin Mencher, a legendary teacher at Columbia University. An excellent introduction to professional journalistic practices and ethics. 4. Discovering the News By Michael Schudson. The best single-volume history of American journalism, especially on the development of the professional journalistic code of “objectivity,” its strengths and weaknesses. 5. The Nieman Narrative Digest Literary news writing is often the best way to describe the modern landscape and the place of the human being within it, argues Mark Kramer, a leading non-fiction narrative writer and organizer of the annual Nieman Conference of Narrative Journalism at Harvard University. The Nieman Narrative Digest archives examples of the genre at: http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/narrative/digest 6. Poynter Online The leading journalism coaches Roy Peter Clark and Chip Scanlan archive their acute writing and reporting advice here: www.poynter.org
Citizen Journalism Online Resources
Minnesota: The Twin Cities Daily Planet www.tcdailyplanet.com This web site aggregates articles from the local neighborhood, ethnic, and alternative press. Northfield.org www.northfield.org A group of citizens in Northfield, MN maintains this web site with daily news about the city’s schools, roads, government, and happenings along with regular postings from city officials and others. The Glocalist www.glocalist.org Publishes stories by Minnesota citizens describing their local communities from an international perspective. National: Voice of San Diego http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/ One of the most substantial U.S. citizen-written news sites. The Columbia Record http://www.thecolumbiarecord.com/ This web site from Columbia, SC, offers citizens “a place where they can define what constitutes ‘news’ in their neighborhoods, their schools, their churches, their lives.” Backfence.org www.backfence.com A community information network linking citizen-written websites from Maryland, Virginia, and California. Bayosphere http://www.bayosphere.com/blog/dangillmor One of the leading theorists and proponents of citizen journalism, Dan Gillmor, blogs here. International: OhMy News http://english.ohmynews.com/ One of the first and most successful citizen journalism web sites, based in South Korea, OhMy’s thousands of citizen journalists have changed the outcome of national elections. Global Voices Online http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/ Dozens of bloggers from around the world contribute to this web site that’s carefully edited to select only credible and substantive posts. General: Citizen Media Monitor http://www.cyberjournalist.net/citizen_media_monitor Maintains links to the latest news and developments in the citizen journalism world, from the Online News Association. PressThink www.pressthink.org This web site by New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen contains weekly exploratory essays on the state of journalism from a civic journalist’s perspective. New Voices http://www.j-newvoices.org/ Seed grants for citizen journalism start-ups are offered through this program funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Copyright @ Douglas McGill 2006
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