An interview isn't a substitute for being there

Today's feature on Joshua Landis was good, but it lacked depth.

It lacked depth because the only thing I know about Landis' experience is what he told the reporter. I'm sure Landis is accurate and honest about his experiences, but the second hand nature of an interview doesn't help readers understand the situation he is in as one of the leading experts on Syria. It only explains it to them.

Actually, a lot of our features on faculty, staff and students tend to lack one of the most important things journalists can leverage: our powers of observation.

Instead of telling me through an interview with Landis how he "whores around" (a good quote) with the media, take some time to go with Landis to an interview he has to do. Try to spend extra time with him to observe his reactions to media phone calls. Does his demeanor change? Does he take a more authoritative tone? Perhaps he loses/maintains his jovial personality?

These are important things to add to features. A good feature is usually about something someone does. But a great feature is about something someone does and how that action impacts them and their loved ones.

Taking some extra time and asking the main source of the feature if you can shadow them to observe their experiences will go a LONG way in helping you write a story. No longer is the story about struggling to find transitions between quotes. (If you find yourself doing that then you aren't writing a feature. It's a question and answer story.) Now it has observation. Now you SHOW readers how the decisions and actions and personality of a person impacts themselves and others.

Here are some great features I've read that I think help expand our idea of a feature. They are long, but they are long because the reporter took the time to observe as well as interview them. These are professional, magazine features, but they provide an excellent foundation in approaching interesting subjects (in this case it's famous people or athletes).

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold - Gay Talese (This is one of my favorite things...ever)

The Last American Hero is Junior Johnson - Tom Wolfe

An excellent example of a great newspaper feature was written by our very own Chris Miller. Miller braved the cold at 5 a.m. to discover just what the work of a Facilities Management employee LOOKED like during a pending ice storm. It's great stuff.

Crews work overnight to clear snow -- Chris Miller

Take a look at these examples and apply the wonderful and powerful tool of observation to make your features more compelling. Your readers will thank you.

Always transparent, even in the face of Armageddon

Wednesday's page one story about Health Department inspections at Campus Restaurants was awesome. Carmen Forman did an excellent job reporting a sensitive topic. Great job.

However, there was some phrasing in the story that is a good opportunity to teach a lesson.

The story talks about "serious violations" multiple times. The problem isn't the word "violation" because it's a noun and it is factually accurate to call it a violation.

But the word "serious" brings up a new issue. "Serious" is an adjective and adjectives can be dangerous.

As a reader, I could be asking myself "who says these violations are serious"? Is it the reporter? Is it the document? Who says and why should I care? Without dictating where the word "serious" is coming from could jeopardize the message you are trying send.

So how do we fix this when a document or organization dictates something is serious? The best way to get around this if you can't write around the word "serious" (or explain how the tiered penalty system works) is to use quotations marks around the word. Putting quotes around the word tells the reader this information is coming directly from a source (a person or a document).

The argument could be made that without the quotation marks the word "serious" is still factually accurate. I agree. But putting the quotations around the word is more transparent and creates a more honest relationship between the sources, the journalist, the reader and the story.

According to whom?

While editing stories this past week, I've noticed a new trend.

Some writers have a habit of attributing paraphrases and quotes like this:

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, Chase Cook, managing editor of The Daily, said.

This is not the right way to do this. You don't want to separate the noun from the participle "said."

Instead, make sure you are attributing quotes this way:

blah blah blah blah blah, said Chase Cook, managing editor of The Daily.

This way the appositive portion of the sentence finds a comfortable spot after the noun and the participle "said" and the noun are together.

In other situations, you may be writing about someone that doesn't have a long title. The normal rule is titles of two words or less go in front of the name, like so:

blah blah blah blah blah, managing editor Chase Cook said.


Attributing quotes to people is easy, but because it is so easy the rules can be often forgotten. Make sure you go through your stories and double check that your attribution is following these rules.

Compare the right facts

As journalists, we have a tendency to collect a lot of data in the search for truth. Inevitability, we have to compare that information together. It helps us create context and it helps us determine impact.

However, when we compare sets of data, sometimes we might compare the wrong information.

This happened today and the impact of that mistake means that some of our readers are now armed with misinformation.

Our newspaper asserted that Crossroads' grilled chicken has 805.9 calories and 10.45 grams of fat. We then compared that to grilled chicken cooked at home, which magically had 100 calories and one-half gram of fat.

That's very confusing. So I did a little research and looked up the sources we attributed to this information.

I found out that the Crossroads' grilled chicken that was referenced in the article is actually a chicken sandwich with a lot of ingredients and sauces. The grilled chicken cooked at home was a 3 oz serving of Tyson grilled chicken strips. (The article mentions this, but it doesn't mention the fact the "other" grilled chicken is a sandwich.)

This happened with the grilled cheese comparison in the article too, but not as severely. Grilled cheese is pretty simple, but the article asserts that two slices of bread and some cheese should be the same no matter what. Not necessarily. What if the bread used by the homeowner or restaurant is thicker or thinner? It is entirely possible for me to go home and make a grilled cheese sandwich that is worse for me than the restaurant version. Why? Because there is no data provided about the type of bread used and the amount of cheese.

Because we weren't upfront with our information or careful when comparing sets of data, we now have misinformed readers. They may actually think a piece of grilled chicken from Crossroads' is filled with fat and calories, but that isn't entirely true. It's the sandwich, not the chicken.

We have a responsibility to our readers to make sure we get information accurate. The next time you sit down and start comparing things, make sure it makes sense to compare them. Make sure you are telling the whole story and being transparent with the data that you do have. Our readers will appreciate it, and they will be better informed because of your efforts.

JAKE MORGAN WINS THE (TUES)DAY


Tuesday's story about cadavers was awesome. Jake Morgan did pretty much everything right in the story. It was interesting, it was about students and it was well written. GREAT JOB!

And to top it off, Ben Williams photo illustration turned out much better than anticipated. Excellent work.