Bart Pfankuch
Better Writing
with Bart
Bart Pfankuch, an investigative reporter for South Dakota News Watch, an independent, nonprofit public-service news agency online at sdnewswatch.org, will offer his excellent writing advice. He can be reached by email at bart.pfankuch@sdnewswatch.org.
Which reporter in any newsroom is always the editor’s best friend, and as such is the least likely to get laid off?
It isn’t the woman who tells funny jokes, though that certainly helps break the tension. It’s not the friendly fellow who brings in donuts every week, though that’s not a bad job-protection strategy either. And it’s certainly not the sycophant who tells everyone what they want to hear (duh, since spotting falsity is a key job skill for editors and reporters.)
Instead — with other basic skills such as accuracy, attitude, hustle and organization all being equal — look to the reporter who never needs to be given an assignment, the writer who can propose and produce an A-1 story on the drop of a hat, the journalist who always has a list of ideas both great and small that can not only fill a hole but do so with flair or feistiness.
Of course, editors still desire depth, storytelling and watchdog journalism. Those higher-level pieces and packages remain the top goal of any good editor and news organization.
But if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll realize that in the modern shrinking newsroom, productivity has become priceless.
Look at it this way: you’re an editor and you have to cut a position, so who goes first? The reporter with a dozen doable story ideas, or the writer who comes to every story meeting with the same list of duds or yearlong projects that never get off the ground?
To that end, here are some ways to generate good story ideas that will not only offer a modicum of employment protection, but which can also prime the pump of higher-level reporting and storytelling along the way.
- Read and think. These are the simplest of all idea-generation techniques, but still top the list. Read books, magazines, news feeds, blogs, online journals, advertisements, your competitors, meeting agendas, government reports, free community newspapers and shoppers, press releases, church bulletins, posters taped to light poles, and for heaven’s sake, read your own publication (and don’t forget the legal ads and letters to the editor.) Then think about how the things you read relate to your community, your beat or your readers’ lives. Begin to put concepts together in meaningful ways.
- Use windshield time wisely. When driving, turn off the radio, put down the cell phone, keep your eyes open and think. What are you seeing? What’s new? What’s changing? Who’s around and what are they doing? Take a different route to and from home. Pick a place on a map and zip over there. Know your surroundings and you’ll know where news is oozing. Be safe and pull over if necessary to record ideas. But never forget that driving time is thinking time.
- Work your beat, then work it some more. Drop by city hall or the courthouse or cop shop and talk to people, anyone. Listen to what they say. Be curious and let them know you care. Share a little of yourself to break the ice. Ask about things that are sensitive. Read agendas in full. Seek out supporting documents. Go where few others go. Always ask people: What’s new? What’s good or bad? What’s inspiring or troubling? What’s coming up? What story would you like to see get told? Get on multiple list serves or press release email lists, even if they’re not directly on point to your beat. Return all phone calls and emails.
- Your real life is an idea wonderland. Keep your mind always open to ideas. Talk to people you meet at the store, in church, at the dog park, in the restaurant or even on the street. If 10 quick conversations lead to one good idea, it’s worth it (plus, being interested in others is just being nice.) Talk to people at work both inside and outside the newsroom. Let non-news colleagues know you are interested. Be the reporter who answers the random newsroom phone call or who handles the oft-dreaded visitor drop-by.
- Always ask yourself: “What’s up with that?” That simple question has been a driving force in my journalism career. Why are things they way they are? Can things be different or better? Is the old way the best way? Is something new part of a larger trend? I remember driving the same interstate route in Florida for a year before finally asking myself, “What’s up with that?” and stopping to see why many farms had long one-story metal buildings but no silos. Meeting a farmer, I discovered that row-cropping was nearly dead in the Sunshine State and that mechanized chicken farming in the long narrow barns had become a new agricultural lifeblood. A solid news trend story resulted after I found out “What’s up with that.”
The bottom line on all these tips is to be curious, constantly curious. Think like a child for whom every person, place, thing or concept is a marvelous mystery waiting to be discovered and understood. I can’t guarantee you’ll keep your job, but it surely won’t hurt.
Mildred “Millie” Siegel, 93, of Danbury, wife of Morton Siegel, died on Wednesday, May 30, 2018 at her home.
Pamela Holley Wood, writer, teacher, journalist, pioneer in documentary field studies and founder of Salt Inc., died May 29, 2019, at her home in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Phebe Ann Clarke Lewis, 103, died peacefully May 5, 2018, in Manchester. She drew first breath November 2, 1914, and received her double first name and its uncommon spelling in honor of her mother’s mother, in whose Lake Forest, Illinois, home Phebe Ann was born.
Elsie Talanian, 98, of Pelham, NH died peacefully on Tuesday, June 12, 2018 at Salemhaven.
Gail P. Delmolino, 71, passed away on June 6, 2018, at her home, after a lengthy illness.
Peter M. Casolino, Jr., died on June 15, 2018 at the age of 51 at St. Raphael’s Hospital, New Haven, CT following a brief illness.
Dorothy Frazer Carpenter was born June 17, 1926 in Rockville Center, N.Y. and grew up in Long Beach, N.Y. a short walk from the white sand beach and ocean of the south shore of Long Island. She graduated from the Long Beach public schools and the University of Vermont. She was a member of several honor societies, an editor of the UVM Cynic, and did graduate work at the University of South Carolina.
Roger Conrad Bowman, 84, of Greenfield died Thursday, June 7, 2018 at home. He was born June 28, 1933 in Derby, CT to Llewellyn H. Bowman and Mabel (Young) Bowman. He moved with his family to Mechanic Falls, ME where he graduated as valedictorian from Mechanic Falls High School. Roger received his BA in English from the University of Maine where he was an ROTC student and entered the Army following graduation. He was stationed at the Pentagon for the duration of his service.
WINDHAM – Richard “Dick” Johnston, 83, died peacefully at Genesis in Lebanon, NH on June 3, 2018 with family around him. He was born September 8, 1934 to the late John and Genevieve Johnston of St. Johnsbury, VT.
Daniel Hovey
Peter Thomas Farrelly Jr.
James W. Morrissey Jr.
Mary Ellen (Monroe) Nihill
Dave Behrens
Mary Barker
John M. Noonan 
Charles K. Goff
Joyce Ann (Baker) Cassinari
Wendell H. Hawley
Roger F. LaFlamme 
Barbara June Clarkson
Hannity Hassle: Let’s apply ‘Five Ws and How’
Gene Policinski
Inside the
First Amendment
Gene Policinski is president and chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute. He can be reached at gpolicinski@newseum.org, or follow him on Twitter at @genefac.
If the burning national question of the moment is whether Fox News Channel star Sean Hannity is a “journalist” or not, let’s use the long-held set of journalistic questions to investigate: The proverbial who, what, when, where, why and how?
First, the “who”: Sean Patrick Hannity is a cable TV conservative talk show host and best-selling author. Most recently he is said to serve as an unpaid adviser to President Trump — some people say that relationship is so close that he “has a desk” at the White House. Hannity was born in New York City, and has spent much of his broadcast career there.
Next, let’s go to “when” and “where”: Hannity’s TV show anchors the Fox prime-time lineup with an audience of about 3 million nightly. His syndicated radio show goes out via the Web and on a host of radio stations. He spent a few early years at TV stations in Alabama and Georgia, before returning to that self-proclaimed urban liberal bastion of New York City to find conservative fame and fortune.
“How” and “why” generally are outside the realm of First Amendment consideration. The nation’s founders didn’t include any specific definition of a free press practitioner, and why Hannity — or any of us — speaks or writes about politics is none of the government’s business.
So, what about the “what”? Hannity said that he is a journalist in a 2016 interview with The New York Times — and said that he is not a journalist (“I’m just a talk show host”) in a 2016 interview with The Boston Globe. The Washington Post‘s Paul Farhi just wrote that in an interview with the Times earlier this year, Hannity said, “I’m a journalist. But I’m an advocacy journalist, or an opinion journalist.”
As it happens, the First Amendment’s protection of a free press covers any and all of those roles in terms of free expression. Objective or biased, nonpartisan or politically motivated: All protected.
But it’s trickier when it comes to the professional definitions and codes of journalism, where ethical standards come into play. And yes, journalism does have ethics — and most journalists follow them, despite some people’s claims to the contrary. Transparency about business relationships is a basic rule, along with the admonishment to avoid such complications if at all possible.
Did Hannity have an obligation to let viewers know of his connection to President Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen — which for some as-yet unknown reason he and Cohen reportedly sought to keep secret? Yes, but not because of politics. In plain terms, we should just know “where he’s coming from.”
No one has been shocked that Hannity is highly critical of federal authorities who served search warrants at Cohen’s office, home and hotel room and confiscated records and computers, and that he defends Trump’s privacy and attorney-client privilege. But was that defense rooted in a personal matter? There were audible gasps in the courtroom, reports say, when Hannity was revealed during a recent hearing in New York to be a client of Cohen.
Was the non-disclosure in any way connected to the fact that Cohen’s two other clients (Trump and a high-ranking GOP official) apparently used the lawyer to broker financial deals with women who claim a sexual relationship with them? Or could it be just a simple defense of a friend, rather than one related to legal standards or constitutional concerns?
To some degree, the “Hannity Hassle” afflicts much of the cable talk show world, where the motivation seems focused more on generating chatter (i.e., ratings) than doing actual journalism. And then there’s the larger problem that reporters from news organizations so often now appear on such shows as pundits, while the networks’ hosts — often former politicians — claim at times to be reporting “breaking news.”
It’s not just on TV that the crossover duties have impact: In some large part, a push for a national shield law protecting journalists and their confidential sources has failed because of the difficulty of defining who is a journalist.
Making it harder for all of us to determine whether the “what” we see and hear is fact or opinion, which damages the very foundations of self-governance.
When the nation’s founders protected a free press, they presumed it would be part of an independent system that would keep an eye on government and society on behalf of the rest of us — not just generate ratings or circulation.
We cannot make the required decisions of a self-governing society if the facts on which we base those decisions come to us via blurry “news” sources whose role and motivations are suspect — or worse, kept secret.
And that admonition does not just apply to Sean Hannity.