Techniques journalists use to find unique angles on stories?

October 22, 2018 6:49 AM

What are some of the techniques which journalists use to find unique angles on stories?

Even when the news is getting commoditised thankfully there is the still the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Guardian, Medium and Vice where originality and unique viewpoints still seem to exist. What are some of the techniques which journalists use to find unique angles on stories which in the world of 24 hour news most people have already heard of? Any websites or book recommendations which cover (or deconstruct) this topic would be great.

posted by jacobean to Writing & Language (10 answers total)

I've really enjoyed reading Jessica Abel's graphic novel and listening to the accompanying podcast for "Out on the Wire" which discusses how NPR and other podcasts and radio shows handle story. Between episodes of how they handle story, they actually workshop students story ideas and help them dig deeper or find better angles for the particular story. Or, if there's even a story there to begin with.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 7:29 AM on October 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

To an extent, I think this is the crux point where creativity meets general reporting skills, when it comes to what makes a good reporter. Anyone can ask the obvious questions but to be a really good reporter you have to have the creativity and the kind of brain that lets you look at a blank page, or an old story, and dream up the one question nobody’s yet asked. So it's a bit like asking “Where do writers get their ideas from?” Out of their heads, because they have the kind of heads that are good at that.

That said, experience helps. Being able to look back and say "I remember when there was a similar stooshie at another City Hall 15 years ago, and group x were unexpectedly affected" means you can go and seek out group x and see what the latest drama is doing to them. And not just literally, but doing that kind of exercise again and again just gives your brain kind of prehensile mental tenacles that are capable of reaching out into the world of people and places around you and touching everything until you find something that connects with the matter at hand.

Tbh I was never the greatest at this myself, but now I'm out among the muggles doing a non-journo job, I'm still streets ahead of most of my colleagues when it comes to pointing out the unexpected implications something could have two or three steps down the line. Makes me a bummer in meetings, when everyone's having a big ol' blue sky riff, but it's useful in the long run.

Also, having a good network of contacts helps. As a reporter, often the unexpected angles come from someone out in the world contacting you with something you couldn't have predicted. A city councillor calls up and says "I've got a constituent who has problem x, which is caused by big issue y, which is a new problem we've never seen before arising from big issue y - could you follow it up, you'll get better traction than me?". For that to happen, you have to put the work into cultivating your contacts during the quiet times, so they get in touch when there's a disturbance in the force in their part of the world.
posted by penguin pie at 7:53 AM on October 22, 2018 [11 favorites]

You'll probably enjoy reading about Frank Sinatra Has a Cold
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 8:44 AM on October 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

The most recent Writing Coach Podcast with Rebecca L. Weber talks a bit about the unique-angles aspect of stories during her interview with Christopher Clark, a freelance journalist and filmmaker. It covers:

- Transitioning from writing articles to making videos
- Covering underreported stories
- Returning to a single story repeatedly
- Pitching short documentaries

It doesn't have a lot about that angle but it has a bit. Good luck!
posted by Bella Donna at 9:35 AM on October 22, 2018

I think the Longform podcast might be right up your alley. Here's a write-up about them at the The Guardian.

"The Longform podcast is ostensibly a simple conversation between hosts Aaron Lammer, Max Linsky and Evan Ratliff (CEO of media software company Atavist) and the author or editor of a news story. In reality, it’s much more than that. The show is an hour-long meditation on the craft of writing, as well as the people behind the stories that are dominating the news cycle or those that slipped under the radar and deserve greater attention. The show offers a peek behind the curtain of the all-powerful media and frequently ends up revealing that the people reporting the news are the real stories."

The Longform podcast link
posted by TheGoodBlood at 9:48 AM on October 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

Afraid I don't have a lot of good books to recommend that are exactly what you are looking for, but I always recommend The Corner as a fantastic example of going far deeper into a story that you usually see. (David Simon, of The Wire fame, with Ed Brooks.) It went way more in depth into the drug war and its effects in Baltimore and really provides a lot of insight into why it's such a failure and what widespread drug addiction can do to an area.

The Mirage looks at another deep undercover reportage into shakedowns in Chicago. Pam Zekman and Zay N. Smith - the book doesn't seem to be in print anymore, but I came by a used copy easily enough on Amazon recently. Great read.

All that to say that deeper is a great way to do a unique story nobody else is touching. So much reporting today is completely bereft of context or depth, why are things the way they are, what led up to the news that everybody is talking about - and what is likely to be the long-term effect of the event/news?

A lot of the "let's talk to Trump voters" is, IMO, a failed attempt at this. Instead of profiling the people who (ostensibly) got what they wanted in the election, what about the majority voters who didn't?

Just approaching stories from a different angle is a good start. Maybe think about what isn't being covered at all, too. See Project Censored about stories that were "censored" in the past year, the recent list talks about restrictions on prisoners' rights, medical waste, bussing homeless people out of cities, and changes to the Mississippi school curriculum which means the Civil Rights Movement is omitted in many books or covered poorly.

So much "journalism" today is "here are the facts we could gather in time for deadline, based on events that just happened or staged news events" and little real research or reporting actually applied. If you can take the time to do real reporting, dig into a story deeper than the surface, and really think about all the implications of a story you can come up with a lot of angles to tackle news from.
posted by jzb at 10:11 AM on October 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

I think the answer is: UNBIASED RESEARCH.

Let me see if I can state this simply... When a subject or event is thoroughly researched, all sorts of interesting perspectives become apparent. This is inevitable, but hard to do with continual deadlines and sometimes lack of access to appropriate informative resources. Familiarity with the broarder contextual elements.

Second answer is often institutional knowledge.

A modern day example of a journalist that is good at this (imho) is David Cay Johnston. He gives great talks about his process and you can find them on youtube and podcast interviews.
posted by jbenben at 11:43 AM on October 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Some amazing answers there!

@penguin pie, thank you for that response on the role of bringing past experience to bear on a story and the role of contacts in sparking off an idea. "I'm still streets ahead of most of my colleagues when it comes to pointing out the unexpected implications something could have two or three steps down the line". Would love to hear an example of this? I think it's this kind of "institutional knowledge" (thanks jbenben) which makes experienced journalists so needed today.

@the good blood, some great Longform links there - thank you!

@jzb, I'm sure David Simon got a lot of ideas for the Wire when researching that book! I thought Project Censored had been killed off. Glad to see it's still going strong! I remember their yearly printed annuals in bookstores.
posted by jacobean at 3:24 PM on October 22, 2018

There's a good podcast with Sam Harris and the Rolling Stone reporter that first reported on the financial crisis in an explanatory way. When Harris asked the reporter how it happened he said he simply thought he should learn about financing to report on it, and that there was a moment when he was interviewing someone when they said "this will all start making sense when you stop seeing this as financial reporting and start seeing this as crime reporting." A light bulb went off. I think he had been expecting to better understand the crisis as a cascade of legitimate errors, but once he saw them as intentional crimes the story became clear and easy to understand. Note: Most of the podcast isn't about this. This part is about 3/4 of the way through. The podcast is called "Waking Up".

I've often had this experience when I design apps. I go over the design again and again, something shifts, and suddenly I'm left with the right solution, which strangely... seems so stunningly obvious once I've hit upon it. If it's really the right solution you almost can't believe anyone ever thought it should be any other way, and yet it often takes forever for me to get there. I will literally smack myself upside the head wondering why I didn't see it before.
posted by xammerboy at 10:09 PM on October 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

It's been a few weeks since this was asked on Metafilter, but ProPublica just published the question: Where Do We Find Our Story Ideas?
posted by theory at 5:53 PM on November 24, 2018 [2 favorites]