‘Face to face … you have more time to improvise and explain your reasoning. Find common ground, do your homework and don’t ask the hardest questions first. If you are prepared, you can often find common ground.’

— Eric Moskowitz,
Metro reporter,
Boston Globe

Panelists share tips
on how to enlist, engage news sources

By Nadine El-Bawab
Bulletin Correspondent

“When you take time to build a relationship with someone … and you care about getting the story right, they become invested in your story … When you are willing to be human, people actually trust us,” Wesley Lowery, a national reporter with The Washington Post said during the New England First Amendment Institute’s panel discussion on “Effective Sourcing and Getting Those Sources to Talk.”

Lowery and two other panelists drew from their professional experiences working with sources as they discussed navigating relationships with sources and provided tips about what reporters should do and what they should avoid.

Lowery focused on the importance of establishing a strong relationship with short-term and long-term sources.

He also talked about the importance of extending relationships with sources.

“There is a huge advantage of calling again on the second day and having a real conversation with them,” he said.

Lowery said he likes to “keep a lot of balls in the air,” but he also provided tips on getting more time to work on stories.

“I’ve had to train myself to not run to my editors whenever I get an idea for a story and that buys me time. If they don’t know it exists, they can’t rush me into writing it,” he said.

Eric Moskowitz, a reporter with The Boston Globe who worked with Lowery when he was at the Globe, recounted his path to becoming an investigative journalist.

“I started (as) a sportswriter. My background is mainly a feature writer. I considered investigative reporting to be a high calling. There wasn’t a secret handshake … to becoming an investigative reporter … It was really a matter of persistence,” he said.

Moskowitz mentioned the three questions he thinks about when he stumbles on what he thinks is a story: “Who should you be talking to for this story? How do you get them to talk? How do you get them to share the more interesting or salient things ever?”

He also discussed how he sometimes contacts sources.

“Sometimes a call can be so jarring. So sometimes I write a letter (to the potential source) … A good percent of the time I have gotten calls or emails,” he said.

Moskowitz said phone calls aren’t always the best way to interviews sources.

“Face to face … you have more time to improvise and explain your reasoning. Find common ground, do your homework and don’t ask the hardest questions first. If you are prepared, you can often find common ground,” he said.

He also suggested taking a car ride with sources when you can.

“When you are in a car with somebody there is a different sort of tension or connection and it is easier for people to share,” Moskowitz said.

Cindy Galli, a senior investigative producer with ABC News, said she has been a consumer investigative reporter for 24 years.

“This is kind of the best time to be talking about sourcing. All of our news – coming from big and small outlets — is from sourcing,” Galli said.

“When you approach someone, be human and be honest … (and) don’t let it be final, don’t turn your back on your sources. The person you brought into this, they are going to continue to live this, so don’t turn your back on them,” she said.

Most important is listening to what your source has to say, she said.

“You don’t want to give people the impression that you are thinking of the next thing. Just listen and it is amazing what happens … (when you are) not writing verbatim questions,” Galli said.

The panel discussion took place Tuesday, Oct. 31, at Northeastern University.

Watchdog reporters:
How to dig deep for in-depth stories

By Nadine El-Bawab
Bulletin Correspondent

“Get closer to the big story using a series of small stories; by doing smaller stories over time, you get a sort of expertise.”

Pulitzer Prize winner Eric Eyre, statehouse reporter for the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette-Mail, told the audience at the New England First Amendment Institute’s panel discussion on “Tales from the Trenches” that he had learned that reporting technique through the years.

Eyre also talked about the importance of having a “what-I-need list” and a “what-I-have list” throughout the reporting process. That eventually “becomes a rough outline of your story … (and) makes it easier to keep track of things.”

He recommended setting aside “quiet time” because “constant distraction gets in the way of a good project,” and suggested asking yourself “what is the story in six words or less?” throughout the process to help focus on what your story is about.

Eyre’s talk involved the reporting that went into his 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning work <<  http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/eric-eyre >> about the opioid crisis in West Virginia and how he was able to get hold of the documents that helped him tell the story.

Eyre created files to help him organize the data he had and tell him where the most pills per person were being distributed versus where the highest overdose rates were. He was then able to discover that the top four places were all in West Virginia.

Eyre discussed the many legal hurdles the pro-bono lawyers who worked for the Gazette-Mail had to overcome to get certain information from the pharmaceutical companies producing the drugs. That included filing a lawsuit and a motion to intervene to unseal documents, which the lawyers for the pharmaceutical companies fought.

Eyre said he was able to find human sources through an addiction counselor and that he eventually added her, as a recovering addict, to the story “to give a sense of hope.”

Eyre was joined on the panel Sunday, Oct. 29, by award winning investigative journalists Kristen Lombardi, a reporter with the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., and Mike Beaudet, a multimedia journalist with WCVB-Boston’s 5 Investigates team and a journalism professor at Northeastern University. They took the audience through the process of reporting that occurred behind the scenes of some of their stories.

Lombardi shared her experience investigating the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

After receiving multiple “compelling anecdotes” about the commission, she began to look for ways to “quantify” what people were telling her.

“Where is the data, the public documents? What can I quantify? How can I take this from a daily story to an investigative piece?” she said. “Always start with a fundamental question: Is FERC a rogue regulator greenlining pipelines at the expense of people’s money?”

Lombardi also filed numerous requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act for “ethics documents” and was also able to find that the commission published data dating to 1997 and that the commission was “the biggest hurdle” she faced during her reporting.

She said that if you really take the time to dig into data “you can have a real impact in your local communities.”

Beaudet, who teaches investigative journalism, said he continually files Freedom of Information Act requests. He discussed the difficulty he and his students had in requesting footage of the Boston Police Department’s body camera videos pilot program, which is considered public record in Massachusetts.

At first, they were billed $157,450 to be able to see footage. After much difficulty, they were able to obtain three videos. Beaudet said he “felt that they (the police) were handpicking them (the three videos).”

Beaudet said he thinks that “having a story about the ability to access the information is important as well.”

Beaudet provided many tips on how important it is to continue to follow up on stories written in the past, which is something he does for WCVB. He talked about some of the ways the Boston Police Department and the district attorney’s office went out of their way to try to keep hidden information about a police officer who was allowed to resign amid sexual misconduct allegations.

That case was one among many cases in which district attorneys use so-called Conley Letters to get other district attorneys to agree not to prosecute police officers because, they argued, “they (just) wanted to get them off the force” instead, Beaudet said.

Beaudet advised those in the audience to “put those public records requests in … because sooner or later you’re going to hit something … that is going to make you stand out against your competitors.”

Bulletin photos by Daniel McLoone

‘Narrative tension is something that informs everything. It’s the one thing that completely distinguishes narrative writing from other conventional article writing. Use it to create a story structure and to keep readers glued to what they’re reading.’

— Steven Wilmsen,
Narrative editor,
Boston Globe

Creating narrative tension
around a central question drives good stories

By Alison Berstein
Bulletin Correspondent

Steven Wilmsen once had a predicament.

“I was a good writer. I knew how to describe, boil down, elegantly arrange language, but there was one thing I didn’t understand. I wasn’t really writing narrative stories,” he said.

Wilmsen, narrative editor at The Boston Globe, discovered the secret: narrative tension.

He shared that technique in a narrative workshop he gave at the New England First Amendment Institute, held at Northeastern University in Boston.

“Narrative tension is something that informs everything,” Wilmsen said. “It’s the one thing that completely distinguishes narrative writing from other conventional article writing. Use it to create a story structure and to keep readers glued to what they’re reading.”

Wilmsen said narrative tension lies in an unresolved question at the heart of a story.

“What is the central question?” he said. “Where does the story begin, where does the story end? The tension is which question is driving the storyline.”

The art of asking questions can go hand in hand with the practice of answering questions, Wilmsen said.

“As journalists, we’re trained from day one not to pose the question in the first place,” he said. “If there’s ever a question, we answer it. A conventional news story begins with the answer.

“Narrative writers do something completely different: they pose a question and wait for it to be answered,” he said. “That’s narrative tension, and we use it in a lot of different ways.”

Homing in on the central question helps guide the entire story, Wilmsen said.

“There’s the unresolved question. The end is the resolution, it’s the answer,” he said. “Will the firefighter make it out of the burning building; will the legislator get all the votes she needs to (get) her law passed?”

Having something at stake is another key component of building tension in a story, Wilmsen said.

“If there’s no consequence to the question, then we’re not compelled to read on, there’s no reason to be tense,” he said. “As long as there is legitimate conflict, then you have enough tension to drive us through the story.

“We had to give the reader some sense of satisfaction,” he said.

The middle of a story enhances the stakes introduced in the beginning of a story and resolved in the ending, Wilmsen said.

“Middles of stories are about effectively managing that over and over again,” he said. “Things that characters have to figure out. As soon as one is done, another one picks up.

“It’s very difficult to write a story with just plain mounting tension,” he continued. “The middle is made of moments of triumph, obstacles that must be figured out.”

An audience member asked about including statistics and other data in a narrative story.

Wilmsen said journalists who have written a strong narrative can easily use figures in their story.

“If you give people a compelling enough story, they’re going to absorb all of that anyway,” he said. “The power of the story is in the telling.

“You’re going to get the message across much more effectively by giving the emotional experience,” he said. “Bring out the allure.”

Wilmsen sees potential in the art of narrative writing.

“We think of narrative writing in lots of different ways. One of the things is felt experience,” he said. “What does it feel like, taste like? We’re doing something explanatory that is both readable that people tend to be drawn to, and helps them imagine what it was like to be in that place.

“What we’ve been talking about here is a big subject,” he said. “People spend their lives studying this and working this out.”

Ten of the 25 journalists invited to take part in the Institute attended Wilmsen’s “Writing Workshop and Narrative Flow” Tuesday, Oct. 31, the final day of the three-day Institute. The Institute is presented by the New England First Amendment Coalition.

An audience member chips in to the discussion at the session on narrative writing.

‘We think of narrative writing in lots of different ways. One of the things is felt experience. What does it feel like, taste like? We’re doing something explanatory that is both readable that people tend to be drawn to, and helps them imagine what it was like to be in that place.’

— Steven Wilmsen

Bulletin photos by Nadine El-Bawab

 ‘This is not personal; we have questions to ask. I’m not trying to be a jerk, but I’m not trying to be their friend.’

— Eric Rasmussen,
Investigative reporter,
Boston 25 News

 There are no dumb questions,
and other interviewing advice

By Jesse Goodman
Bulletin Correspondent

Among the tips Eric Rasmussen delivered to journalists at the recent New England First Amendment Institute was this answer to a query about what interview questions to avoid:

“The only dumb question is the one you don’t ask. If it doesn’t end with a question mark, you probably won’t get what you want.”

Rasmussen, an award-winning investigative reporter with Boston 25 News, had much advice to share on his topic of “The Confrontational Interview and Transition to Audio or Video” at the Institute Oct. 31 at Northeastern University.

“Interviews take on all shapes and sizes,” Rasmussen said. “Every interview, almost without exception, doesn’t go (according) to expectation.”

Rasmussen, a news anchor in Orlando, Fla., Chico, Calif., and Champaign, Ill, before returning to Boston, the home of his alma mater, Boston University, recommended identifying what kind of interview is planned.

He mentioned three kinds: Interviews for accountability (Why was this person let out of jail with this kind of record?); emotional (How does it feel to get out of jail?); or informational (When were you released from jail?).

Rasmussen showed examples of his work. They included an unscheduled interview with a man using an alias to sell food stamps on Facebook as a part of a report on the abuse of food stamps in Massachusetts. Rasmussen figured out who the man was through his friends on Facebook, and tracked him down before confronting him.

That doesn’t have to be the case for all interviews, Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen showed another clip of him talking to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh about the building of a fence to keep drug users away from a particular area, only to have them use another end of the same street. Walsh’s team didn’t want him to meet with Rasmussen at first. But after Rasmussen interviewed Walsh’s chief opponent in the mayoral race, Tito Jackson, Walsh was ready to sit down with Rasmussen and talk about the fence.

“This is not personal; we have questions to ask,” Rasmussen said. “I’m not trying to be a jerk, but I’m not trying to be their friend.”

Rasmussen’s other tips included structuring a story with characters, context, conflict, and resolution.

He recommended reviewing quotes from the person you’re interviewing, to come up with additional questions. Rasmussen suggested trying to make most questions open-ended, to encourage the interview subject to respond more expansively.

Rasmussen urged never allowing someone being interviewed to get away with saying something that isn’t true.

“You can really miss out if you don’t listen to what they say,” Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen suggested getting contact information to follow up with the person interviewed, even if it’s just to let the person know that the piece has been published or aired.

Presenter Eric Rasmussen provides interviewing tips to his audience at the New England First Amendment Institute.

 ‘You can really miss out if you don’t listen to what they say.’

 — Eric Rasmussen