Newspaper Correspondants

The Reporting Process

Think of the process of reporting as collecting.

Effective writing is built with specific, accurate information. Collect facts, collect impressions, collect quotations, collect details.

Before going out to do the reporting or interviewing, sit in a quiet corner and figure out what questions need to be answered. Put yourself in the place of the person you picture as the reader of your story. Write down the questions and bring them with you as you do research, as you attend a speech or a meeting or as you do an interview.

You're not an expert, so don't be afraid to ask dumb questions.

You're not perfect, so don't be afraid to double-check spelling or facts, even if it is embarrassing for you to say,

"Could you repeat that please?" or "Would you mind spelling that again, a little slower?"

Use all your senses: What does the auditorium or room or house look like? What do you see or hear or even smell?

Reporting complemented by writing skill is what produced the following excerpt from Saul Bellow's Seize the Day:

"On Broadway it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air was almost motionless under the leaden spokes of sunlight, and sawdust footprints lay about the doorways of butcher shops and fruit stores. And the great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every age, of every genius, possessors of every human secret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particular motive or essence--I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I  give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally. The sidewalks were wider than any causeway; the street itself was immense, and it quaked and gleamed and it seemed...to throb at the last limit of endurance."

Details tend to reveal.