Journalist truths: “One of these days you’re going to fuck them over”

I am not sure you guys noticed, but VentureBeat’s traffic has risen by a multiple this year. There’s many elements of success behind this, one is the editor-in-chief’s Dylan Tweeney’s management of the writers. In my limited time I have I still open up my VentureBeat emails to read Dylan’s weekly goal/vision/bootcamp emails. There’s so much to learn from him. Here’s an example, a memo from one of the VB bootcamps. It actually points out in plain English that relationship between journalists are their sources is antagonistic in the end. Here’s the learning for startups - even if tech blogs hype you up, don’t take it seriously. Ride it, but don’t mistake it for reality. As Tom Petty says: what brings you up will bring you down.

“One of these days you’re going to fuck them over, and you need to make that clear up front.” - a veteran legal reporter

Some  weeks ago Dylan had a veteran legal reporter (VLR) come in to chat with us. He was all kinds of awesome. Here are some highlights from my notes. (I’ll ask him for some links to big stories he’s done and send those around later.)

Interviewing:
Don’t start an interview by accusing or confronting your subject. You want to get people on base, not just hit a home run right away. Start by talking about the topic, ask questions you already know the answers to, make incorrect statements to get them to respond. If you ask a straightforward question, they can just say no. If you make statements, they will want to interject, correct you and give the right answers.

Persistence:
Ask the same question over and over again in different ways. It’s amazing what people will tell you if you ask the right questions, are persistent, and continue to call back. Send a ton of emails, call a million times.  Even if you can’t call someone or go see them, send actual notes. On paper. [VLR then told a story about the time he wrote Ted Kaczynski a handwritten letter, and Ted wrote back. Creepy.]

Relationships with Sources:
People should know that you are friendly, and they should also know that you are not fucking around. The reporter is in a position of power and authority, so it’s important that you put on a professional game face, know what you are talking about, and don’t ramble.

Never make it sound like you’re their friend or you’re on their side. One of these days you’re going to fuck them over and you need to make that clear up front.

Stay in Touch:
Stay in touch with people. Keep track of people. Contact your sources, even when you aren’t working on an article. Call them up out of the blue and ask them, What’ve you got cooking? Always call the subject of an article up afterwards, even if the piece was unflattering. What’s amazing is that they will usually tell you even more shit.

Get Color:
A story of lots of facts isn’t a good read. You need to add color. His example was a big story about a Ford recall, and the human element was a woman’s story of how her husband died when his car was hit by a train because the car malfunctioned on train tracks. [Did I hear this story right? Sounds like something that only happens in movies.]

Staying Hungry/Avoiding Boredom:
We all gotta feed the beast. Not everything that we feed to it is that tasty. There’s no fucking around, you just gotta spit it out at times. But you always have to have stuff going up on that you’re interested in. Always be working on longer, important pieces in addition to the daily rigamarole. If you don’t, you’ll get bored. It’s one thing to be busy, and it’s another thing to be excited and have all this stuff up your sleeve and be excited about what you do.

You gotta have a drive. Instead of being content flipping pancakes all day long, you have to want to make chocolate cake too.

On Pandering:
We’re supposed to tell people what they need to know, not what they want to know. You can’t lose sight of that. If you’re writing about something that’s important, people won’t always read it. But you have to keep feeding people smart stuff.

Organization:
VLR recently started using Evernote to keep track of his interviews and notes and legal briefs. But he claims to actually be a disorganized mess, which I found comforting.

Collect Contacts:
“All contacts are gold.” VLR names, titles, and contact info from unsolicited emails, PR pitches, and anything else and puts them into Google Contacts with appropriate keywords. Then, one day down the line when he needs to find a contact, he can search the keywords and find great sources.

Writing the Article:
A story will only take you long to write if you don’t understand it or if there are holes in the reporting. If you have it all the information, it writes itself.