Tag: Beat Reporting Today

The thing about beat reporting today is that your competition has changed. In some ways, there are fewer news resources. But in other ways, more people, data tools, and automated services are curating and distributing news than ever before.

I’m gathering tips in posts on this tag here.

Running a small, niche local news organization, I think a lot about introducing reporters to our approach to beat reporting—one where we are both part of and covering a community. It’s a tricky balance: You have to know information before you can share it, while balancing relationships and delivering value to readers.

Here’s my running list of tips for successful beat reporting:

• Think in three stages: Reporting is about gathering news, creating stories, and distributing them effectively. Treat all three as equally important.
• Focus on the people stories: If your reporting is boring, remember: Find the people.
• Context is key: Information is plentiful, but context is rare. Get great at searching archives, collecting insights, and connecting dots in your community. You don’t need to know everything, but you do need to know how it all fits together.
• Use the right tools: Social media, RSS feed readers, data dashboards, and email lists should feed you a steady stream of information to curate. Stay plugged in.
• Leverage community events: Events are invaluable for finding stories, building relationships, and adding context. Make it a habit to attend them regularly.
• Build insider access: What private group of power players can you meet with regularly? Gossip often leads to real reporting. Be in the know.
• Ask the obvious question: What might seem obvious to insiders can look very different from an outsider’s perspective. Your fresh eyes can uncover new angles.
• Keep relationships front of mind: Write, interview, and edit like you’ll have to talk to these people the next day. Because you likely will.

Beat reporting today requires balancing relationships, tools, and context to build trust and deliver value. These are the habits that can help reporters succeed in a noisy, ever-changing news environment.

After a few years of working closely with other reporters, I’ve found the points we most often talk about. Here’s a list.

• Tell me something that matters with your lede.
• Anecdotal ledes should follow through the narrative arc. That anecdote better be in your kicker too
• Either a story I want or a lesson I need. Readers want a great story or something that can help them (preferably both)
• Where is your nut graf? This always feels like what is most often missing. This is the pivot between a story and your point: what broader context brings this together?
• Structure and pace are two different skillsets
• Prepare headlines and stories for the wider social web. Help think through the tightest way to explain the importance of your story.
• Allow your story to be focused locally and understood globally
• That’s redundant, which means a waste of words, which is a sin.
• Know what your news site believes in. Who is your audience? What is the worldview? What is the broader narrative this story fits in?
• How could this story be told differently?
• What would the reader most need? What would help the reader scan? Would bullet points help?
• You haven’t earned long sentences; shorter sentences for pace
• Move faster; ship product
• Be flawless on grammar
• Hyperbole and cliche is where imprecision lives
• Human elements to give the reader a break from technical pieces
• Lead with attribution on purpose, either for style or more likely because the source matters. otherwise, lead with the lesson. the attribution is the footnote.
• Link for more information
• Have a call to action and make it easy
• When in doubt disclose. Transparency over all else