Editing Help Please - 8 Things for Citizen Journalists - Suggestions and Advice

While I think Smiling Jack wrote perhaps the definitive piece on citizen journalism I had some recent thoughts about how citizen journalists could do a better job.

Some of what I am going to include are things I took for granted (such as that you identify yourself prior to an interview) but that may stem more from my journalism background than anything else.

I think it is important, though, to remember that citizen journalists often have no training. Thus they not only have no set of ethics codes they are operating under (something I have suggested in Calvin's article we consider adding at Newsvine but may have never even seen a journalism ethics code.

1 - Identify yourself and who you are writing for.

For me this seems obvious but earlier this year a Huffington Post contributor either scooped the media and/or was deceitful (depending on your opinion of what she did) when she did not identify herself when asking a loaded question to Bill Clinton and then publishing his highly charged response.

Would you want to know if a person you are talking to is planning to publish or broadcast your response? I would. I dispute the premise that citizen journalists and/or bloggers can and/or should break traditional ethics rule because a) politicians won't talk to you if they know you are going to publish the results and/or b) We (citizen journalists) don't need to follow the traditional ethics rules because look at how awful traditional media coverage has been. In short I see that as an ends justify the means argument and for me it doesn't wash. I'm sure some disagree with me and I encourage them to do so. But this list is admittedly subjective.

A simple, "Hi, I am Scott. I write for Newsvine.Com" should suffice. This usually sparks a question about whether I'm just some blogger whose audience consists of my mother and dog or what . They don't say that, what they will actually say is "Is that some kind of blog or something?" This is when you should feel free to mention that the site is owned by MSNBC and has x numbers of readers or visitors.

That last bit usually seals it – face it, this is one time when you DO want to flaunt the connection to the mainstream media because it will help you get the interview.
Exception – if you are interviewing, say, opponents of the mainstream media you might not want to mention you are owned by MSNBC. Incidentally I always love when some Newsviners will say "boycott the corporate media, apparently ignoring that we are now part of the corporate media." I tried boycotting myself but got bored.

2 - It can never hurt to include sources, citations and footnotes in your article

– that not only demonstrates you did your homework and gives your article more credibility but also helps shoot down the theory that most citizen journalists are just untrained journalists who do a terrible job of keeping their opinions out of their news stories.

This is also helpful when people ask, as they invariably will do, for you prove a certain assertion you stated as fact. A good citizen journalist will be able to either point to proof or admit they are wrong and adjust that part of the story accordingly. Someone who refuses to do things should not be surprised if they begin to have credibility problems.

3 - When writing a news article

be careful not to state as facts that which are really opinions. If you are not sure if something is factual best to state it as an opinion. Or ask yourself, "Can I prove this to be true?" I put a primer below (see first comment)

The next three are journalism 101 but as I noted many citizen journalists do not know these three things since they had no training. So...

4 - Get a person's name and title at the start of an interview.

If you wait until the end you will likely have this problem: the person will leave, due to a distraction or citing the need to be elsewhere, before you get the full name and title, which would make the entire interview unusable in traditional news networks and sketchy at best for web sites like ours.

They say that most people when they first see their name in a newspaper article will then be dismayed to find at least one error in that article, often the spelling of their name, thus sparking the question, "Well, what ELSE is the newspaper getting wrong?"

Sometimes this is due to typos but more often it is due to careless reporters who will make an assumption – "Surely he spells Smith the regular way" or "That guy was a guy, right?"

I will often ask the person for a business card which serves two functions – it gives the proper spelling of the person and their title (and if they now later complain about an error you can point to their own dang card). This is also faster than having them spell out their name. I usually will also ask them for a cell phone number which really serves two purposes – it makes it easier for you to reach them and, conversely, it makes it more difficult for them to evade you.

This was more true before I left journalism, back before the phone would identify who was calling. Thus when a company president fires half his staff, announces it in a press release Friday at 4 pm (the ideal time to drop bad news on the logic that most journalists are leaving or trying to leave and the budget for the next day's front page is already done) and then leaves work for the day, leaving the secretary to fend off all calls with media with a "no comment" or a convenient "Mr. Smith would be the one to answer that question and I'm sorry but he has just left for the day."

THAT is when it's great to use that cell phone number he forgot he gave you months ago and after he asks, "how did you get this number? I gave it to you. Doh!..." you are more likely to get a quotes before he says, invariably, a few things you have to remind him you can't print in a family newspaper (but you can on Newsvine).
Ah, good times…

Getting that business card and cell number also gives you a lead-in to your next question, namely…

5 - Call later with follow-up questions,

clarifications or see if there is anything else they wanted to mention that they forgot.

Do not hesitate to do this. It accomplishes two things – it gives you credibility because it demonstrates (and you should use this exact phrase) "care about getting this story as accurate as possible" and it gives you a chance to ask a few more things. Often during an initial interview a person will eventually tire of the questions and want to leave. Now is your chance to try to ask some more questions and this time the person can't make the excuse of "I need to get to my office" because they are now probably at their office. In between the two conversations I suggest you start writing your story.

I see putting together a news article as being somewhat like putting together a puzzle – you have all kinds of pieces (good quotes, good anecdotes) but you have to figure out how it fits together.

It's often not until you start putting it together that you realize you are unsure about this or that fact or you wish you understood something better. So during this second call you can get that stuff clarified.

Traditional news organizations usually prohibit letting sources see an article prior to publication but that is mainly to avoid legal messes like prior restraint attempts and calls to the publisher with threats.

I would often get around that by simply reading aloud a story while on the phone with the source after explaining he can't change his story – and if he does I will note that in the story – but if I explained something inaccurately now would be the time to speak up.

This came in especially handy when writing about topics way beyond my knowledge base, be it stories about our county's $50 million sewer debt or how exactly cows are cloned or how the hospital's latest facility plans will impact the average citizen.

To avoid getting played it is good practice to read the story aloud to someone with an opposing view point, again reminding them they can't change the nature of the story but you would rather hear now what is explained badly then have to write a correction the next day.

Often, probably more so these days, you will be asked if you can just email them the story. I always resisted this because while you can control who you are talking to on the phone(and I refused to do interviews on speaker phones) you can not as easily control who they will send the email to.

6 - Avoid the easy cliché questions

The all time most dreaded question a journalist can ask is "How did you feel" or "you just won a million dollars – how do you feel"? In a way this question gets a bad rap – while it is a bit lazy and cliché often the journalist is taking the easiest (and that's the problem – it is too easy and obvious) way to get the subject talking about their thinkings and feelings. But if readers, listeners and viewers are sick of the question than it is safe to guess the subject, especially if someone interviewed often, is even more tired of it and will think less of the person asking it.

Instead, either ask the question in your own distinct way "what emotions are you feeling right now"? or "When you describe this moment to others in 20 years how would you describe it?" or, better yet, surprise and impress them first with some counter-intuitive questions. Counter intuitive is a fancy pants way of saying "against the grain." I'm a fan of stories and questions that are counter intuitive.

My all time favorite counter-intuitive story was by a reporter in Baltimore who got stuck with the deaded assignment of writing a story about the weather (these questions could usually be summed up in 20 words: "Guess what? It snowed yesterday! As if you didn't already notice…" Instead this reporter played a hunch and asked what criminals do when it snows and learned that crime usually drops when snow does and thus he got a clever story out of a boring assignment.

My point? Don't ask the easy obvious questions. Throw into the mix some questions they may have never been asked before. This doesn't mean you avoid getting important information – you just find a different way of gleaning that info.

I gave some advice here on how to do interviews and suggested here how you can use silence to aid your interviews.

Incidentally some will write a list of questions prior to an interview but in my experience that leads to disaster because while you may get your answers you may miss out on even better answers had you been ready to improvise more.

Better to have a list of topics you want to cover and then let the person being interviewed set the agenda more. You can step in and steer the conversation, of course, but if you do all the steering that's more likely to lead to a short boring interview than if you pick up on something odd the person said who, when you ask them to elaborate, may say, "Nobody's asked me that. Let me explain why exactly I have my dog's name tattooed on my butt" or something interesting."

7 - Keep your gun camera holstered until the end of the interview.

If you want to ruin or cut short an interview, then do this – pull out your camera. Even worse ask to take a photo prior to the interview and then scratch your head wondering what you did wrong. Better to save the photo until the end of the interview after you have collected every piece of information you need, especially their name.

People are just plain weird when it comes to photos. This is more true about the older population who are less accustomed to seeing their photos on someone's facebook or MySpace page.

I have had people who would say the most vanilla thing in the world and then freak at the prospect of having their photo taken. You know those "man on the street" features local newspapers do? I had to do those for every newspaper I worked for and it was always like pulling teeth because even though the question might be the most innocent thing in the world, i.e. "What is your favorite ice cream flavor and why?" when they say that camera they split like, well, a banana.

So let me keep it simple – don't shoot (your camera, that is) until you are ready for them to end the interview because odds are good they will run when they see that camera. Similarly if you have a rude or offensive question you feel the need to ask, save that for the end too because that too will likely end the interview.

Better to get a few safe comments from a man accused of mistreating his 80 dogs (and having a few starve to death) before you throw him the one that will likely end the interview, namely something like "I need to ask the question many are wondering, namely 'how could you'? Notice that device – where you are not saying it directly but rather are telling them what others say – that's another good interview device because it makes less personal. But be prepared for the comeback of "Who said that?"

Hmm, that question wasn't quite an interview ender but I bet this one would be – and is a question others will demand to know if you ask – namely "Could you not smell or tell that something was wrong?" If you get an answer that will be your lede. If not then at least you can include in the story that you asked the question and he refused to answer, "responded with a profanity about this reporter's mother," "showed this reporter his middle finger," etc.

While I would love to see more of us taking and publishing photos, be it slide shows like I do for the vinemeets or the great photos taken at the convention protests, but sometimes a citizen journalist has to choose between getting an interview and getting a photo and, personally, I'd rather you get the interview and THEN, if possible, try to get the photo too.

8 - A few thoughts on email interviews

Most of this piece and my prior interview piece address interviews done in person which is always the best way. For most of my interviews lately, usually with authors, in person interviews are impossible to arrange. Publicists will often suggest phone interviews which are also quite effective but can take a long time to transcribe.

What I tell publicists is "No offense but I stopped doing phone interviews when I stopped working as a paid journalist." I have only lost one interview out of about 200 for Newsvine as a result of that stance. Instead, I do most of my interviews by email. This gives both the interviewer and the interviewee a more flexible schedule and, as a bonus, when the interview is done you have essentially a transcript of the interview.

Ideally you can get the person to agree to a two-part email interview. You can usually sell them on it by pointing out that it will mean double the publicity and coverage. While this is true it serves the same purpose as the follow-up phone call, namely it gives you a chance to ask follow-up questions and get more topics covered than if did the interviews in one batch.

Some publicists will blanche and say their author/musician/filmmaker client is too busy to answer 20 questions. I'd usually get them to agree to it by promising to send 10 questions now and the other, say, 8 or so, a week after receiving the first ones back. Some bartering ensues but in the end – don't tell the publicists this – I usually still get my 20 questions, I just do two –part questions.

Oh and avoid close-ended questions. Imagine you are a teacher assigning an essay topic. Do you write "Was your summer fun?" or the interview equivalent "Did you enjoy making this (insert product here)"? because there will always be that student or interview who will simply write "yes" and move on to the next question. Better to ask something more open-ended, e.g. "What were your goals for this and did they change as you worked on it"? Or, at a minimum, scatter a few "please elaborate"s in your questions so if they do say "yes" or "my best one yet" or something too short and pat they are then encouraged to be more specific.

There's nothing worse than finally getting an interview with someone you really admire and then having all of their answers consist of maybe ten words maximum. Been there, done that, and yes it sucks. So work to avoid it.

Learn from my mistakes. To quote Jerry Maguire, "help me help you."

(This is part of a series of writing advice articles I have written. I hope they are helpful. You can find others in the series in this writing advice group)

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	8 Things for Citizen Journalists - Suggestions and Advice	Scott (Scoop) Butki	Wed Sep 24	13
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