Anyone who has worked as a reporter or editor knows that it’s impossible to be fully engaged for eight (or 10) hours a day, five (or six) days a week. Journalism is a creative field that requires a lot of hard work, which tends to come in bursts of energy and brain power rather than via a consistent pace of grinding at one single task until a shift is over.
The challenge, then, is to make sure we are putting our passion and effort into the process at the right times, when we can do the most good and make our work as complete, clean, accurate and impactful as possible. Here is a look at five critical junctures when journalists should place more time and focus on producing great work.
STORY IDEA GENERATION
I had an editor who once schooled me to look for new newsroom hires who had a strong sense of “story conceptualization.” Journalists who are able to come up with ideas, figure out what is most important and then seek out on-point sources have a great chance to be successful.
To develop that skill set, one must read widely, talk to a wide variety of people, be curious and then think deeply. Good story ideas should have the “Three Is and a D” – they should be interesting, informative, impactful and doable. Getting to that point requires reporters to have good ideas, but to then ferret out what matters most and to figure out how the story can be reported and then told. Editors should demand that reporters come to them with story ideas fairly well-formed and with a plan to execute the reporting, writing and packaging. Discussing and thinking about a topic are worth the extra energy expelled at the very start of the story process.
ART AND ENTRY POINTS
Obtaining great art, graphics and alternative entry points into stories is never an accident; it always requires planning, preparation and thought to pull it off. Be sure to speak with your editor, photo editor or shooter at the very moment a story concept takes shape. Think of ways to illustrate stories that are not obvious. Watch for data sets that can be broken into telling charts or boxes. Consider ordering an illustration or drawing to enhance packaging. Consider using maps with stories to provide context and a sense of place. Be a reporter or editor who shoots photos when the opportunity arises.
SOURCING AND REPORTING
All great journalism emerges from a strong focus on two critical skill sets: Finding and cultivating good sources and undertaking smart, aggressive reporting.
Finding on-point sources who will openly share information requires research to learn about an issue to determine who plays a key role; it demands that you treat sources fairly and with respect to keep them in contact; and, like all good journalism, it takes thought to find and contact the best people or gain access to critical documents.
Patience, thoughtfulness and preparation are all key elements of improved reporting. Have a list of questions ready and listen, then think, then ask, then listen again. Go over details with the source in order to ensure accuracy. Do not be in a hurry. Always shoot for one more source than you think you need.
PRE-WRITING, WRITING AND SELF-EDITING
The more time you spend thinking about your story and how it will be organized and packaged, the better it will become. Make a plan for the piece before starting to write. Sketch an outline with the lead, nut graph, transitions and section topics before writing. Never go it alone. Discuss the piece with your editor, an interested colleague, a family member or anyone who will listen, and take their advice if worthwhile. Each brief conversation can help you form and shape what the piece will say and how it will say it.
The actual writing process surely requires more time than many journalists allow. Delivering a quality hard-news leads require as much time and energy as telling a story with an anecdote. Do not become locked into a concept and then force it to work. Google-check all names and titles. Hunt for potential double-meanings or confusing copy or quotes and remove them. Always remember: your first draft is never, ever your final draft.
FOLLOWING UP
Once a piece is published, be sure to review what it said and sift through any reactions you receive. Use that information to consider follow-up stories that advance the news needle by way of reaction pieces, deeper dives and solutions journalism. Sometimes, it’s possible to plan for a follow even before the original piece runs, and it may help to hold back some reporting if either the original piece gets too long or there are facts or details that logically follow the initial reporting. Especially with more in-depth or impactful reporting, discuss the opportunities for potential follows with your editor or a trusted colleague in advance and make a plan.
We Once Went “MAD” for the Magazine — and It Was Fun and Funny
The world is soon going to be a little bit less MAD — and the poorer for it.
The quintessential baby boomer-era satire mag, MAD magazine has announced it will soon contain only re-published content, on a monthly basis — industry-speak for trying to garner what nostalgia-tinged profits might still be obtained from those who recall better days.
Playboy, Rolling Stone and now MAD: The nameplates may remain on repurposed products and in digital or slicker formats, but as each announced its essential demise in the past year or so, the print-and-ink-on-paper soul of each, like Elvis, “has left the building”
The first two publications in that trio appealed, in very different ways, to the hip and fashionable of their respective social spheres — or, at least, to those who wanted to be “hip.”
Far too many people to be truthful claimed only to read Playboy for the articles, but the works of respected authors and discussions of controversial social issues were tucked in and around the centerfolds. (For those too young to know what a “centerfold” is … never mind).
Rolling Stone brought counter-culture to the masses — an interesting social sleight-of-hand — and documented decades of societal change along with the authors and photographers who ushered us into a new kind of journalism populated by master storytellers and photo artistry.
MAD, on the other hand, remained for much of its life the same as it was when launched in 1952 — a wonderfully juvenile, cleverly illustrated, delightfully snickering means of mocking adult foibles, politics and cultural institutions that were way too full of themselves.
Unabashedly egalitarian, it did not matter if its pages mocked Democrats or Republicans, beloved or despicable characters, Hollywood celebrities, literary giants or cultural icons. Linking any and all to a good joke involving flatulence worked every time.
The magazine’s apolitical satirical range may well have been captured best in an October 1968 cover in which perennially grinning MAD icon Alfred E. Neuman (catch phrase: “What, me worry?”) was shown holding a bevy of balloons, each bearing the names and faces of eight politicians from Richard Nixon to George Wallace to then-President Lyndon Johnson, in one hand — and a large hatpin in the other.
MAD and Neuman recently popped back into the nation’s headlines, but it was a mixed blessing. President Trump compared Democratic presidential hopeful, Pete Buttigieg, to the gap-toothed, youthful character and said, “Alfred E. Neuman cannot be president of the United States.” But 37-year-old Buttigieg said he didn’t know what 72-year old Trump was talking about, “I’ll be honest. I had to Google that,” he said. “I guess it’s just a generational thing. I didn’t get the reference. It’s kind of funny, I guess.”
Unlike European nations, where published satire to this day often carries a heavy intellectual tone and poses existential questions of life and death, MAD would hold up a goofy, slightly bent mirror to make fun of serious absurdities in American life. It spoofed the Cold War via a silly cartoon strip titled “Spy vs. Spy,” in which each side would attempt to foil the other, always ending in mutual death.
All the while, we eventually realized, it also was parodying the acronym for nuclear war’s likely outcome of “mutually-assured destruction” or “MAD.”
The magazine’s writers — the “usual gang of idiots each issue noted — made fun of movies, TV shows, political figures, social mores and often touched on subjects not often touched on in regular media, from drug abuse in the military to sexism in the workplace.
In that manner, it led the way for a more topical, edgy style of entertainment linked to the news, from TV’s “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” in the 1960s and “Saturday Night Live” beginning in 1975 to The Onion and Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” today.
MAD took a baser approach than some. Esquire magazine’s annual “Dubious Achievement Awards,” which began in 1962 and continue to this day, manage to convey a much more sophisticated tone in its photo-and-punch line format, even though a hallmark image was Richard Nixon, mouth agape, with the repeated line, “Why is this man laughing?”
Both magazines managed to transmit the sense to several generations of readers that pomposity deserves to be deflated, the arrogant warrant comeuppance, politicians are not always to be believed — and that it was good to be skeptical, but not so cynical you couldn’t laugh at life.
Once, MAD even helped develop legal precedent: In 1961, music publishers who represented famous songwriters and composers sued MAD for $25 million, claiming copyright infringement — the words were changed, but the parody was to be sung to the tune of the original composition. One example: To the award-winning tune, “The Last Time I Saw Paris”, MAD had rewritten it to poke fun at a baseball player who endorsed razor blades and beer on TV, in “The Last Time I Saw Maris.”
The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals found for the magazine — in Berlin v. EC Publications, Inc. (219 F. Supp. 911, S.D.N.Y., 1963) — setting the precedent that has protected musical parodies since — as long as all or most of the original lyrics are changed.
Still, if we are honest, much of MAD content was just aimed at getting a good guffaw out of its fans. For example, one cartoon series showed two men mocking unseen dogs for barking at passing cars. As I recall, one said something like, “Hey, let’s see what they do with the car if they catch up with it.” Cut to the closing panel, where the other man says, “Well, now we know … so let’s find a car wash.”
I can still hear my fellow fifth-graders roaring with laughter over that one.