Journalism 101: Writers and Reporters
In journalism, “writer” and “reporter” are often used interchangeably — JournalismJobs.com doesn’t even have a “reporter” job category, just “reporter/writer” (although, strangely, they have a “writer” category, too) — but realistically, they’re two separate, but related job skills.
Writing is just that: the art of communicating with the written word. Crafting a compelling headline, developing an informative but readable lede, structuring a story well, evoking the right images with the judicious use of description, metaphor and simile, these are all the tools of the writer’s craft.
Reporting, on the other hand, is getting the story, the whole story, so help you God. It involves knowing what questions to ask, when and how to ask them, getting people to talk who don’t want to and being able to follow a story to where it’s really going, rather than where the editor back in his office thinks it should go.
Every print journalist is a mix of the two skills, and rarely in equal portion. Every newsroom has the reporters sweating blood over every story, unable to craft a lede on deadline if their life depended on it (which is certainly how it feels at times). Clunker headlines, stories slashed to the bone by editors and stiff and dull language are the debris that reporters who have little writer in them trail behind. When I was at the Potomac News, we’d gather around the desk of the education reporter more nights than not, helping her get her lede done and trim the story down to its required size before deadline, because, as good of a reporter as Sandra was (and she really was a good reporter), some aspects of writing were utterly alien to her.
In contrast, writers with little reporter in them tend to write beautifully and, until you sit down an examine the story carefully, informatively. Once you look at them closely, though, you’ll see there’s not much content to it. There are obvious questions unasked, unsupported conclusions and fun-but-pointless quotes. There are probably more of these folks around than pure reporters: They tend to survive quite well in newsrooms and thrive under deadline pressure. They don’t win any journalism awards — although they can and do certainly win them for their writing — and if they don’t make any great waves, they follow the Peter Principle and rise to the level of their own incompetence.
The problem, though, is that while writing can be taught — there are naturally gifted writers, but mostly it’s a craft, not an art, especially when it comes to journalism — there’s only so much that can be taught to a would-be reporter who doesn’t have the right gut instinct. You can teach them tricks, like when to ask a tough question (late in an interview), the 5 Ws (and one H), how to not phrase a question (don’t ask yes/no questions, since they don’t provide quotes of any real length) and so on. But, at the end of the day, you either have more balls than brains and a huge streak of curiosity/nosiness, or you don’t.
In contrast, the reporters may have problems like Sandra did with writing on deadline and crafting a lede well, but they get the story. At the same paper, I worked with perhaps the best cops/courts reporter I’ve ever worked with, Kari Pugh. Kari, who was 98 pounds soaking wet, was the darling of all the police in the area. She got access to areas few civilians ever saw and got information (both on and off the record) no other reporter could touch. She’d breeze back from a horrible accident on Interstate 95 and toss around grisly Polaroids she’d taken of the scene she would be using as a visual reference for writing her story — not only would she be allowed that close to an accident scene, the police trusted her enough to let her pull out the camera and start shooting. She got stories no one else did, told the readers things no one else could, and made it look easy. Her writing rarely sang — it was workmanlike, reliable and sturdy, but not particularly sexy — but her stories were hard not to read.
When it comes to working on skills, it’s best for an aspiring reporter to focus on the reporting skills. So long as the writing is up to the high school graduate level, and features complete sentences, decent spelling and a sufficient English vocabulary, they’ll be fine. If you can’t master the 5 Ws (and one H) and the other basics of reporting, the prettiest images and cleverest alliteration won’t do a thing for you.
(Where do I fall in this continuum? Probably more on the “writer” side than the “reporter” side, I’m sorry to say. I have to re-read all my stories to make sure I didn’t forget something crucial, and I sometimes have to call sources back to ask them questions I should have asked the first time around. This is BAD when it’s a one time shot at asking a question, as you might imagine. But I’m doing my best to improve.)
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I am newly responsible for the printed and online communications for a small Union with limited resources; 13 organisers , 3 industrial staff and 7 admin staff – the latter of whom I also supervise. You can see I can string a sentence together but I am not a reporter.
Our Union Organisers are totally focussed on their roles and goals. One of my many roles is to revamp the newsletter and website to engage our membership. To do this I recognise that our current publications do not meet the criteria of reporting, rather are wordy ramblings written by others on specific topics that fail to impart a sense of excitement or engagement with the reader; our Union members.
We desperately need to report the small incremental wins and examples of where collectivism has worked and where individualism has failed to achieve the same kinds of wins. So, there is a lefty-socialist bias to the writing. Big wins are easy to write about, but too far and few between to fill 6 pages, four times a year or to meet the demand to refesh our news section regularly on our webiste. For an example of the quality, or lack of it, in our stories go to
http://www.asu-sant.asn.au
I also do the layout and production of our newsletter to pre-printing using Adobe Indesign.
Whilst I might be a good (amatuer) design and layout person and can write a sentence that makes sense to many – I am not a reporter. I am ‘it’ at the moment so want to start interviewing Organisers, Union delegates and members to produce authentic news stories, not just “essays” and lectures.
Can you please provide advice or the name of a good book on the subject of Journalistic reporting that will turn me into a moderately competent reporter/writer in five minutes, or six months? I have just discovered the Five W’s (and one ‘H’) principles but really need to know how to craft the questions competently to elicit the meat and bones of the story, not just the skin.
If you can help me, I would be very appreciative – the amount of available time and the timelines I need to meet in a myriad of other tasks leave me little time to dedicate to a whole course on journalism. Anything will be an improvement, I hope, on our current efforts.
Comment by JP — January 25, 2006 @ 18:51
I apologize for taking so long to get back to you on this — it was a wacky week and this reply got lost in the shuffle, unfortunately.
Asking questions is something every reporter does differently, but the simplest advice is some of the best I got early on: Don’t ask yes or no questions. Sometimes it’s hard not to, but a question that can be answered with one word often will be.
Although it’s not an educational site per se, the Columbia Journalism Review’s blog, http://www.cjrdaily.org/ is a good resource, as they dissect what’s good and bad about contemporary American reporting in exacting details, and sometimes, having a bad example is as helpful as having a good one.
I actually only took one semester of newswriting in college (the rest was devoted to broadcasting and media law), so I’m not great in terms of knowing what books to get or not get. As for general writing advice, though, I like Writer’s Digest magazine and their books. I’m not sure if the books themselves will be available in Australia, but the digital components of the magazine of course are: http://www.writersdigest.com/
Good luck!
Comment by Beau — February 2, 2006 @ 10:49