Coming up with Stories

You ask and I respond. So how does Spec come up with its story pitches?

At its most basic form, there are two kinds of editors who report to Erin and me--deputies and associates. Associates are in charge of shepherding stories from 6 p.m. on the night of production until the paper is PDF'd sometime between 1:30 and... well, sometime after 1:30. The deputies, on the other hand, are responsible for everything from the inception of the idea until 6 p.m., including reporting questions, issues of context, and, yes, the pitch itself.

Now, as covered in the last post, deputies each have their own staff of between six and ten beat chiefs. These are the people who are coming up with the bulk of the pitches--in fact, most deputies require that every beat chief brings in between one and five pitches to their meeting every week.

Where do beat chiefs get their ideas? Pretty much everywhere. Most come from regular communications with sources. I've seen beat chiefs meet with five sources in a day and while these are usually interviews, sometimes, they're just an opportunity to sit down and chat about what's happening within the beat.

Beyond just talking to sources, students go to meetings, get on listservs and newsletters, and sign up for Google Alerts on a bewildering number of topics that are in some way related to the beat. But our best pitches often come from the most mundane sources--walking around campus looking at fliers and talking to friends about what is pissing them off this week.

There is no scientific process to any of this, and often, pitches vary based on the beat you have. Our reporters who cover the class councils and the University Senate, for example, can expect a relatively steady stream of news about policies and campaigns. On the other hand, in non-news intensive beats like Health Services or Career, Fellowship, and Academic Advising tend to have more analysis stories that may lack a time hook.

As I said, beat chiefs bring their ideas to deputy meetings, where the pitches get fleshed out and either approved or tossed. One of the reasons that deputies are chosen is that they have what we call a "news sense"--an idea for the kinds of pitches turn into good stories and those that don't. Additionally, we have a sense for which stories we have written in the past two years, as well as which stories other media outlets have done, and we try not to repeat them. To help with this process, for the first month or so, deputies bring every pitch that they're given to the weekly deputy meetings with Erin and I and we talk about what makes it a good or bad pitch. By the end of February at the latest, all of the deputies have the hang of what kinds of stories work, though Erin and I still check in when we question something that's on the story list.

I know that I'm being vague, and I apologize for that, but in truth, a lot of it is subjective and a lot of it is based on experience. Between Erin and I, we have probably read every story that Spec has printed in the last 30 months and many that were published in the three years before that, and because of that, we have gained a pretty good sense for the kinds of ideas that do and don't pan out as imagined. That said, we're always looking for fresh perspectives and new angles on stories that deserve to be told.

Keep asking questions!

You ask, I respond

Sorry for posting so late. Slept until 4:15.
Yay! We finally got our first question for the blog. Actually, we got our first several questions for the blog. I'm going to string out the answers over the next few days in order to A) give more attention to each (I'm trying to limit these posts to 500 words or so. The fewer issues I cover in those 500 words, the more in depth I can go), and B) Without any issues coming out this week, I had been planning to address some of these exact questions

So without further ado, Anonymous asks: "Josh, could you talk a bit more about the editorial structure of the Spectator? As in, the division of beats?"

Certainly, Anonymous.

First, a little background. The idea of a beat system is to have one writer responsible for keeping tabs on a full coverage area. These "beat chiefs" are supposed to meet regularly with key sources within the beat, pitch ideas for stories every week and to be regularly writing these pitches into articles. In theory, this benefits everybody: our sources are better served by having a regular point person on the paper and reducing the number of calls made by random reporters on deadline; the paper has a regular stream of ideas coming in so that two or three people aren't responsible for coming up with 40 story ideas each week as was the case in the past; and the readership is better served by having stories across a broader range of issues than might otherwise happen.

The idea was first introduced at Spec three years ago by Megan Greenwell and Matt Carhart in a limited form and has grown over each successive year. Right now, we have 28 beats that are covered on the campus side and about another 15 on the city side.

The process of deciding which beats we need to cover begins in October. The outgoing set of deputy and MB-level news editors meet at their weekly deputy meeting and discuss areas during which they discuss a year's worth of coverage, analyzing what the paper covered well, what it covered poorly, where we most need to improve in the coming year, and if there are any beats that we are covering which don't necessarily need a full-time or part-time beat chief.

After we compile this list together, we announce the beginning of beat shadowing at our next news meeting. Any person on the paper who has gone through training is eligible to shadow for a beat. As a shadow, reporters spend a week as if they were covering the beat. They'll meet with sources, come up with three pitch ideas, talk to their deputy, and decide upon at least one article, which they will then write.

Traditionally, writers have been eligible to shadow for up to three beats. After the end of three weeks, the deputies reconvene and look at who ran for each beat, specifically looking at how [Crap, that's 500 words already. I'll swear I'm almost done!] passionate they appear to be about the beat, how good their pitch ideas were, and how their story came out. It takes a lot of thought, especially considering the domino effect of matching all of the writers up with something that they want when some beats are more popular than others, and at the end, we have a roster of names.

Inevitably, something is left uncovered. At this point, we go back to writers on staff--both those who shadowed and those who didn't but have done impressive work in the past--and offer them some of those beats that have been taken. This is always a tough calculus--we don't want to guilt somebody into accepting a beat that they don't have time to write, but at the same time, we want to cover all of our bases.

The finals step is to organize beat chiefs into deputy groups. The idea here is that we want similar beats that share common sources and issues in a single deputy group so that we don't repeat ourselves and so groups can expand pitch ideas into analysis pieces and deeper stories. Also, we don't want one deputy to have 12 beat chiefs while another only has six.

By the end of winter break, we have all of our beats set, though we are continuously reevaluating structural issues.

More tomorrow.