Where is the news?

May 7, 2007 4:37 AM

What are some off-beat sources of local news?

So I'm doing work experience at a reasonable-size regional daily, and I've been given a free hand to write more or less what I want. The trouble is, all the obvious news is covered - there are dedicated reporters for the council, crime/fires, schools, and so on. I also don't get anywhere near first pick on the people who call or write into the newspaper or the press releases, and I have pretty much zero contacts in the area.

What should I do? Where should I go? Who should I call? I'm way out of my depth. Any ideas incredibly appreciated. I'd really love to find something that they'll want to use big towards the front of the paper, which generally means good pictures as well as a good story.

posted by reklaw to media & arts (13 comments total)

Oh, man. . . I can definitely identify with this problem. It's one I struggled with when I was a reporting intern.

The best way I found to get on or near Page 1 was to tag along with a reporter who was already covering a good story. Sometimes this meant we got a joint byline for the first-day story -- or just a contributing line for me. But it was good experience. And it meant the chance to do follow-up stories on subsequent days, which may or may not have been Page 1 material but at least gave me a better shot at it.

Needless to say, this requires being on good terms with another reporter. You don't really want to be the unwelcome shadow or story-poacher. But more often than not, I was welcomed, because it meant less work for him/her . . . especially if I was willing to do the crappier parts of the assignment (stay out late, attend the boring meeting, whatever).

That's the first thing that comes to mind, anyway. I'll keep thinking on it.
posted by veggieboy at 4:59 AM on May 7, 2007

Do you work in a particular department? What types of stories are you looking to write? Features? Investigative?
posted by miss lynnster at 5:16 AM on May 7, 2007

It's a newsdesk. Features are pretty much off-limits.
posted by reklaw at 5:30 AM on May 7, 2007

Do you have access to the local police/fire dept. blotters & stuff? Sometimes it's the little details and ironies of seemingly ordinary stories that make them particularly unique or newsworthy... the things that other people don't catch.
posted by miss lynnster at 6:21 AM on May 7, 2007

One of the places I always look for story ideas (I'm a news photographer) is the very publication I'm working for. The beat reporters usually just cover the first little bit of a story, i.e. the crime reporter does the murder and the court hearing but doesn't go much deeper. There's always someone living a life affected by whatever news happens. If the school district gets redrawn, there'll be a family for whom it'll be a hardship. If laws about fencing around property change, there's someone who's got to tear down their fence and build a new one. If someone gets murdered there's a vigil and a family that has to deal with that loss. Find the human aspect of the hard news and you should do well.

Read newspapers from different communities and see if you can't find similar stories in your community.

Oh, the only way to make contacts is to go out and start talking to people. Look at posters and announcements in libraries and other public places. Talk to the people who provide various public services. Hang out on a street corner with a notebook clearly in hand and your credentials hanging around your neck. Give your business card out to every single person you meet on the job telling them to contact you if they have anything you might be interested in. Sometimes, if there's a lull in the action with a subject (and I realize a writer's job at a paper is usually from a desk, whereas my job at a paper as a photographer is to be with the people the story's about...so this might not totally apply) I figure out a way to chat about what I've been doing on the job this week or will be doing later today or next week; people invariably say something like "Oh! you know what you should do a story on?..." If anybody ever initiates a conversation or even says hello, that usually means they want to talk. If the conversation goes nowhere, say something like "So what's your story?" Sounds corny and it is, but it also works sometimes. Figure out enough things that sometimes work and start trying all of those techniques on people you talk to and you're bound to find something. Just yesterday in fact, while at a kids' talent show, a guy started talking to me and suddenly he told me about people who hunt deer with bows within city limits. Sounds like a story to me with potential for unique photography and lots of numbers and law research and complaints from neighbors and community leaders which are just the sort of things editors seem to like. You never know what you'll find out.
posted by msbrauer at 6:27 AM on May 7, 2007

Press releases don't help much with news. You probably need to build up a good list of contacts. A good way to do that is to just start hanging out in the areas where things happen. Every city has many places like this. Downtown

Are there businesses that are the movers in town? Contact the owners or management to introduce yourself and seee what is going on. Spend some time in the archives to get a feel for what happens outside of the regular news coverage. Sometimes reaching back into the archives gives you insight into events which might be repeated. Anniversaries of events can sometimes lead to good stories. What happened 50 or 100 years ago on this day? Will someone be memorializing that event?
posted by JJ86 at 6:35 AM on May 7, 2007

Maybe talk to some of the underserved in the community. Some of the people whose stories should be heard, but somehow never are. Look for people who don't look like the ones in the news stories your paper shows. Talk to them about how they feel about things that have occurred.
posted by cashman at 6:40 AM on May 7, 2007

Attend local meetings, no matter how obscure the topic. Scour Craigslist rants and raves (maybe someone's complaining about something that would make a good story), read the community newspapers, make friends with cops. Try walking around the city, talking to people, and look for things of interest.

In some neighborhoods, the front lawn has become the place where people take on the aldermen.

Also, (not sure if you went to J-school) but swallow your pride, and look back at Journalism texts. Many of the ones I used covered what to do in this situation.
posted by drezdn at 6:41 AM on May 7, 2007

Convince your editor to let you start a local news blog like this one and encourage everyone and his brother to start posting to it.

Pick and choose the good stories, follow up with the original posters, then write them up for the paper. (Offer to share the byline with the OPs, and watch the stories flood in. Every blogger wants to appear in print)
posted by briank at 7:06 AM on May 7, 2007

msbrauer has it. I'm not quite sure I understand your position at the paper (are you getting paid? do you have an editor? deadlines?), but I was a metro columnist for a few years and most of my ideas came from 1) digging into sometimes-shallow coverage at the local daily and 2) talking to people wherever I was. Start hanging out at coffeeshops and other active spots in your town, and just start asking people questions about what's not getting reported. You'll pretty quickly find that "all the obvious news" is often not covered properly at all.

Start talking to the 2nd-tier local politicians who may not get as much attention from your paper but who might have interesting ideas. Ask questions of store owners in parts of the town that are going through changes - what do you want to see? What's going right? Wrong? Learn to start seeing everyone as a potential source of a story. But definitely work on getting some contacts.
posted by mediareport at 9:43 AM on May 7, 2007

This is not the answer to your real question, but the answer to your above-the-fold question: The Arcata Eye has the best goofy local news reporting that I know of.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:08 AM on May 7, 2007

One of the most memorable lessons I learned in my J-classes in college:

Enterprise.

Go outside and talk to people and find stories. It's hard work, but it's rewarding.

Please don't go out with the attitude that you are trying to find your Pulitzer. If your editor thinks your story in depth, interesting and worthy enough to be a feature, that's great! The true reward of journalism (at least for me) is being able to give a voice to others. It's you being able to have an intimate conversation with your reader about something you find interesting and think they should know about it.
posted by spec80 at 10:49 AM on May 7, 2007

I report for an offbeat college/community radio local news show, and I think that's certainly relevant enough for me to throw advice at you. Here goes...

- Subscribe to any local (e)mailing lists you can find. get these on yahoo groups, local blogs, nonprofits, community orgs./churches' web sites, etc. You'll get all kinds of leads.
- Check out obscure online communities for your region/city -- I promise, they're out there. (for example, strange meetup groups)
- (this has already been mentioned, but I nth it:) Read your own and other local papers, and look for what parts of the story have been completely missed. If you've been given some more journalistic freedom, it's possible you could find your front-page story by investigating further some odd tangent of another story.
- But above all, as has been mentioned: Talk to strangers!. You'd be surprised what some people think, know, and do.
posted by the_arbiter at 8:02 PM on May 7, 2007