View from a Pro

Veteran journalist Dan Bice (sans horse) talks about death threats, learning to talk to people and being honest with interviewees

BiceMugWhen veteran journalist Dan Bice got his now-infamous “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on” reply from ex-Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, it wasn’t even close to the ugliest response he received over his career in journalism.

“I would say I get a lot of harsh emails and calls from the public, including three death threats,” Bice said in an email Thursday. “Someone posted on Facebook last night that they are hoping I get mugged.”

Bice is well-known in the Milwaukee area as an investigative journalist and columnist who covers all corners of public officials behaving badly as well as odd situations that deserve public scrutiny. He not only covered Clarke’s escapades, but he has looked into the high salary paid to an official running a town of 4,000, concerns regarding a non-profit organization of a possible Democrat challenger for governor and the financial troubles of a conservative website. Bice also wrote about the ethical journalistic issues associated with a journalist having an affair with the city’s police chief while writing a long feature on him.

In this case, Bice managed to raise the ire of Clarke with an email requesting a few basic answers to questions pertaining to his county-funded, around-the-clock security detail being halted after he resigned his post. Bice also asked Clarke for his thoughts on the $225,000 cost associated with it. When Clarke responded with the terse, two-sentence email, Bice did what all good journalists do: He looked before he leaped.

“I did think it was a little stronger than normal,” he said. “But then I wondered if someone else might have written it for him. So I wrote back to try to confirm that Clarke did, in fact, write the response. I didn’t get an immediate reply, so I didn’t include his response in my story. Later, I was told by one of his advisers that the ex-sheriff was expecting a stronger reaction from me to his email. Then I felt comfortable posting it.”

I asked Bice for some of his thoughts about interviewing, specifically how he does it and what tips he could offer students to help them get better at it. Bice, home recovering from pneumonia this week, was nice enough to provide some thoughts on the topic. Of all the things he said, two stuck out to me as crucial for student journalists:

  1. Practice makes you better at this and even a pro like Bice still occasionally gets interview jitters: “Your students need to learn how to talk to people, even about difficult subjects. You get better at this only by actually doing it. I still get nervous before some interviews, but many of the best stories come from learning to manage conflict when talking to sources.”
  2. Email should not be the first option for doing interviews: “Many students and young reporters love to do interviews exclusively by email. I make email my last resort. Far and away, the best quotes from face-to-face interactions followed by phone interviews and texts. Email responses are often lifeless or stilted. Which is how your story will sound.” (Side note: Yes, we both know that not only were we both doing email interviews to get this post rolling, but it was an email to Clarke that got this whole things started in the first place. I acknowledge the irony, but would defend this instance of email, given Bice wasn’t at work, he’s recovering from pneumonia and this interview wasn’t going to be like Jack Bauer interrogating Santa.)

 

Here are some other important thoughts Bice provided:
ON SOME UGLY EXCHANGES HE HAS HAD OVER THE YEARS:

“Public officials are a little more restrained on email. But I’ve had some real rows with prominent officials over the phone or in person over the years. For example, I was very upset with US Rep. Ron Kind for not telling me he was coming to my office to meet with my editors to complain about a column I had written about him. I caught him before he got in his staffer’s car in front of the Journal Sentinel and made sure he couldn’t get in. It allowed us to air our differences. Fortunately, I’m not a shouter, so that keeps things from escalating too much.”

ON HOW HE LEARNED TO DEAL WITH DIFFICULT INTERVIEWEES AND ASK TOUGH QUESTIONS:

 

“I enjoy doorstepping officials who are ducking me. Cary Spivak and I did this routinely when we were writing the column together, and I still do it on major stories in which I think someone is avoiding me. In 2014, I had to talk to a guy who was the focus of a story. I knew he had PTSD and drank heavily. I called two of my friends to let them know I was going to his house at 9 p.m. and that I would check back at 9:20 pm. The interview ended up being tense, but it all worked out. I also visited the run-down apartments run by a prominent local official a few years back. The official had used some vague language suggesting I might encounter some harm from one of his armed guards if I trespassed on his properties. But one of his tenants helped me out, so I was able to skulk around without any problems. Also, I frequently catch candidates while they are out campaigning. That way the responses are unrehearsed and/or not filtered through a bevy of staffers and consultants.

ON BEING HONEST WITH INTERVIEW SUBJECTS:

“I hate it when journalists, even veteran ones, do interviews and dupe individuals into thinking a story won’t be as harsh as it will actually be. We owe it to people to be honest with them. It actually prevents even bigger problems once the story is published. But it’s also the decent thing to do. If you’re doing a series of interviews, I don’t think you should show all your cards at the start. But before a story goes online or in print, the people you’re quoting should have a pretty good idea what’s coming.”

 

Guest Blogging: PR and Marketing- How do you get your audiences to believe you?

Each week, we will strive to post content from a guest blogger with an expertise in an area of the field. This week, we are fortunate to have Rick Fox, the president and founder of Riverside Strategic Communications, LLC. He has two decades of experience in communications for some of the world’s leading brands, and he is an award-winning journalist and PR professional. His post is about the most crucial aspect of marketing nad PR: How do you get your audiences to believe you? Interested in being our next guest blogger? Contact us here.

—

It’s often said in marketing and PR that the truth isn’t written or spoken, it’s believed. So, how do you get your audiences to believe you?

Building Trust

The success of public relations, whether using the traditional press release or media pitch, or social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter, relies on effectively connecting with your audience. Whether your goal is to sell a product, get more clicks on your website, or inform consumers about the bad behaviors of a corporation, your success depends on your ability to get their attention and keep it long enough to make your point.

This requires strategic thinking, organization, research, and the ability to communicate. But does that require good writing?

It All Comes Down to Words

We live in a time of skepticism. The terms authentic and transparent are thrown around quite a bit. But in PR, transparency and authenticity really do matter. Your success in convincing others to buy what you’re selling depends on the words you type on your keyboard.

Overused superlatives no longer cut it. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Rather than claiming perfection, strong messaging requires plausibility. Your audiences, reporters and customers alike, prefer to hear pros and cons versus a self-congratulatory message claiming how good your product is.

Don’t get caught up in the buzzwords of the day. Avoid words such as guarantee, financial freedom, and best of breed. Use protection, financial security, and effective instead. Build your credibility by under-promising and over-delivering.

Nuance Matters

When someone asks you for a favor and you say “I can do that” it would reasonable for that person to assume you are going to do it, right? But in PR, the difference between can and will is real.

Take, for example, this response to questions about an employee accused of embezzling funds from a company. “We agree this is unacceptable and this employee will be fired.” You’ve stated that you are going to fire him. But what happens when your internal investigation reveals the funds were simply miscoded by another employee? Could you have instead told reporters that “We agree that the allegations are unacceptable and we can take actions as appropriate when we complete our investigation”

A well-written holding statement should focus on what is, not about what isn’t. For example, one of your buildings has burned and a reporter is asking you what happened.

An unprepared spokesperson may say something such as, “We don’t know the cause of the fire yet. We don’t know how much was damaged. We don’t know when we’ll be operational again.”

A prepared spokesperson will refer to his written statement that states, “All our people are safe. We have a well-rehearsed, fire-safety plan that we executed very well. We’re proud of the way our people acted during this emergency.”

 

What’s Your Story?

If you don’t tell it, someone else will. And when someone else tells it, they rarely do so the way you would want. I had a client who prepared a media statement to use following the release of an inspector’s report that confirmed a pest problem in his restaurant.

After drafting key messages, working through multiple rounds of edits and approvals, a member of his team responded to a reporter and felt good about the exchange. Then he read the first headline, in a highly-credible news outlet, that read as follows: ‘ABC Restaurant staff working to rid kitchen of roaches’. He couldn’t understand how they came to that conclusion. After all, there were no longer any cockroaches in the restaurant.

When he re-read the statement, he quickly realized that he mentioned all of the important things: they were sorry they let their customers down; they took immediate action and were addressing issues to ensure this would never happen again; they immediately saw dramatic improvements. But it’s what he left out that caused the problem. He never actually said the roaches were gone or the problem has been resolved.

Luckily, he had a good relationship with the reporter and was able to add five words to his statement that said, “the conditions present in our restaurant were unacceptable… and have since been addressed.” This simple addition resulted in a new, more favorable headline, while reversing the tone of the story.

Write to Your Audience

Remember, the truth is what people believe. Your communications – tweets, videos, blog posts – all need to be believable before they can be effective. Believable stories require strategic thinking to understand what’s meaningful to your audience, and solid writing deliver a story that hits the mark.

Every word should have a purpose – helping convey exactly what you are trying to communicate. Each message should be proven with facts. Each fact should support your overriding objective. And your objective should be clear.

Evan as the channels we use to communicate continue to evolve, the fundamental ability to write clarity, brevity and relevancy is more important today than ever. Strong writing will separate your pitch from the rest, just as is will separate you from your competition when looking for a job. If you can write, you can tell more effective stories, and if you’re planning a career in PR, telling stories is the business we’re in.

 

“Don’t be an idiot” and other sage advice for those of you covering hurricanes

Next week, I’m hoping to have a few interviews with student journalists from Texas who have been diligently covering Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath. In the mean time, enjoy this legendary memo from the Miami Herald’s Martin Merzer. It echoes two of the things we noted in the book about covering crime and disasters:

  1. Be calm. A panicking reporter is a useless reporter.
  2. Be safe. A dead reporter isn’t much better than a panicking reporter.

You might never cover a hurricane, but you will cover a disaster or a crime, so allow the mortician’s humor to buoy you as you understand the core values here: Preparation, safety, innovation and audience service.

Enjoy this classic in all its glory.

Catching up with Ken Smith, getting some great words of advice for student journalists

In updating the “Dynamics of Media Writing,” I got a chance to catch up with an old friend and incredible journalist, Ken Smith. Ken spent the past 15 years at some of the best news organizations in the country, helping to cover some of the most important news of the day.

During his time at the St. Petersburg Times, he was a copy editor and designer who worked on numerous big stories, such as the Buccaneers’ Super Bowl win and the Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster in 2003. As a Page One designer at the Houston Chronicle in the middle of the decade, he worked on hurricane coverage (Katrina and Rita) as well as the death of Pope John Paul II and the Texas Longhorns’ 2005 national championship.

After moving to the Washington Post in 2006, he spent seven years as an assistant news editor/national politics producers. During his time at the D.C.-based publication, he was the lead designer on the extra edition and commemorative edition for President Obama’s inauguration and he worked on the design and production of two Pulitzer Prize-winning stories– The Virginia Tech shootings and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center crisis.

Today, he is the web and emergency communication specialist for the city of Bryan, Texas, where he oversees multiple websites for organizations throughout the area. He also serves a a liaison to the regional emergency operations center, meaning he disseminates crisis-communication information during disasters. He said he relies on his journalism training every day and that writing remains at the core of what he does. He was  also nice enough to offer some advice to students about what they need to succeed in this field:

 

  • “Everyone needs an editor. No matter who you are, or what you do, or how high you rise, everyone needs an editor. And, that editor will save you from yourself.”

  • “Get it right. If you’re not sure, don’t write it. Your credibility is everything in journalism and in life.”

  • “Don’t ever write something down that you don’t want to see splashed all over the Internet. This is especially true of social media. Employers do look at your social media accounts. Don’t ever think that the disclaimer “opinions are my own, not the company’s” will matter to your employer.”

  • “Learn to code. It can only help you. It will also impress people and raise your profile. You don’t have to be a back-end development wizard, but just knowing how to do the basics — and knowing how hard it is — will give you a greater understanding of what can and can’t be done, and it will allow you to speak intelligently with developers and other technical persons.”

  • “Learn everything you can. No matter what it is, never turn down an opportunity to learn some new skills. You never know when you might need them.”

Transferable skills: Why you should major in journalism (and why people should hire you)

One of the primary themes in both books is “transferable skills.” I borrowed this from a former student and editor at the student newspaper I advise here at UW-Oshkosh.

Andy was looking for staff members to fill out the ranks of reporters, designers, photographers and graphic artists, but was coming up short in the journalism department. In an attempt to improve his odds of building a staff, he took his pitch for the paper to a wide array of other departments on campus, telling students in English, sociology, art, poli sci and more that the paper had something to offer them: transferable skills.

In other words, if you can write for a class, we can help make you better at it and therefore make you more marketable. If you can shoot still-life images in a studio for an art class, we can get you opportunities to shoot a wider variety of images and thus make you more marketable. Not everyone bought what he was selling, but we did get a broader swath of people.

Jill Geisler, one of the pros in the Dynamics of News Reporting and Writing, published a piece for the Poynter Institute on why people outside of journalism should hire journalists. At its core are the principles of transferable skills: Journalists can write well, think critically, make deadlines, solve problems and more.

The underlying assumption here is that journalists learned these skills at some level through schooling and experience. Most of the reasons she offers as rationale for hiring journalists also applies to explaining why people should consider journalism as a major and participate in student media opportunities.

Consider this a cheat sheet the next time someone says, “Why are you majoring in journalism?”

“Smart Brevity”

Politico co-founder and Axios Media CEO Jim VandeHei just explained what made his brand of journalism successful in an 85-word blog post, reinforcing his motto of “smart brevity.” Here are a couple highlights we can all learn from:

 

  • Obsess about your reader/viewer/listener. Their addiction/appreciation equals long-term biz success.

  • Related to first one: Never do stupid tricks for clicks or ad dollars. Short-term high but long-term buzz kill for biz/consumers.

 

These two items are at the core of everything we talk about at the front of the books: The audience matters most. If you don’t know for whom you are writing, you aren’t going to be able to help them or make them want to seek you out as a source of information.

In addition, the reason VandeHei and his crew can write so tightly is because they have a strong working knowledge of the topics on which they write. I can always spot the student with the least confidence in his/her writing when we review stuff in class because that person always has the longest and most complicated sentences. The people who know what they are talking about? They can boil it down to the noun-verb-object in nothing flat. Even if you aren’t in a reporting class, you have to “report” enough (read, ask questions, bother people etc.) to have a good grip on the topic. That will improve your writing.

 

 

  • If you don’t know with precision what your company is doing broadly, and what you are doing personally, run. Clarity of purpose is 🔑.

 

This is more about making the company successful, but it falls nicely in with our discussion of writing. One of the hardest shifts we have to make in learning to write for the media is from the long, descriptive-filled sentences of English, sociology and history papers to the noun-verb-object, bang-it-out structure we use in our field. After years of writing one way, it can feel frustrating to strip a sentence down to its core.

The reason we need to do this is to give people what they need to know quickly and simply. That’s our purpose.

And after taking four times the word count to explain half of what VandeHei had to say, I’ll end here for the sake of “smart brevity.”

 

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. (or how Pat Finley’s set of “toddler-ish” drawings shed light on the Chicago Bears’ pointless media policy)

For the past week, Sun Times journalist Patrick Finley has covered the ins and outs of Chicago Bears’ training camp. Entering his fifth year on the Bears beat, Finley has provided readers with an abundance of copy since camp opened on July 27. He has discussed the issues QB Mike Glennon has in throwing deep and the promise associated with rookie Mitch Trubisky. He has conducted one-on-one podcasts with linebacker Danny Trevathan and running back Jordan Howard. He has also filed feature pieces like his look inside the wide receivers’ room and his story about three players who got a second chance thanks to the Bears.

However, it has been his use of awkward artwork in response to the Bears’ restrictive media policies that has fans and journalists alike paying the most attention to him.

Finley said the Bears allow journalists and fans to watch all of the training camp work, but journalists can only take photos and videos during the first 20 minutes of the day. On the other hand, fans can shoot whatever they want, whenever they want and post it wherever they want.

To provide a touch of levity regarding the absurd double standard, Finley did what journalists have done in court for decades: He created artist’s renderings of what he saw.

The only problem? He can’t draw:

DF1g9rAXUAAm2qo
Finley’s “live look at (rookie QB Mitch) Trubisky.”

“I wish I could say I planned it out, but it made my giggle the first day I drew one,  so I kept doing one a day,” Finley said in an email interview Friday afternoon. “I knew it was silly, but also subversive. Also, that’s the way I draw; I didn’t make it look toddler-ish on purpose.”

Over the next several days, he kept adding to his portfolio with drawings of punt return drills:
DF6y8D-W0AAVAcT

The innovative use of tennis racquets and volleyballs as training tools:

And even a fantastic TD hookup today between Trubisky and wide out Tanner Gentry:

DGZ5M7CW0AM1Dm7

WGN-TV has even made a point of featuring Finley’s work. Finley said his sketches are among the most-viewed tweets he has published all week and has even drawn the attention of some of the Bears’ PR folks:

“In the last couple days, some PR staff members have asked me about it, but not in a threatening way, and certainly with no request that I stop,” he said.

Finley said he hopes his subversive sketches will draw some much-needed attention to the bigger picture: Why is there one set of rules for journalists and another for the general public?

“You’d think that this would help them realize the policy is silly,” he said in an email. “I mean, fans can post videos and photo online all day! — but we passed that point years ago, I think. If anything, it’s been interesting to watch the public’s reaction (on social media at least) to the media policy.”

To see more great writing and interesting artwork from Finley, follow him here on Twitter.

“Learn how to bullshit” (and other great tips to becoming better at journalism)

I often tell students that I don’t know everything (big surprise) but if I don’t know something, I’ll tell the students I don’t know it and then I’ll go ask people who do. This includes fact-based things such as what the GNP of Peru is in a given year and experience-based items such as how to get a difficult interview subject to loosen up.

This week, I asked a group of experienced journalists what they saw as the most important skills young journalists could pick up that go beyond what you read in a textbook (farther vs. further, how many words to put in a lead etc.). In reading through the answers, here are the themes that emerged:

  • Break out of your comfort zone: People often fail to differentiate among not liking something, not being able to do something and being uncomfortable doing something. I don’t like eating broccoli, but I am able to do it. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable, unless I’m eating it at a friend’s house and his wife or mother says, “So how do you like the broccoli?” and I am forced to lie: “It’s great!”
    I am unable to dunk a basketball. I would like to do it and it would not make me uncomfortable if I could do it. I just physically can’t propel my 5-foot-9, middle-age frame up to the edge of the rim and throw down.
    The point is that in most cases, we don’t like doing something because it makes us uncomfortable, so we say we can’t do it. The truth is, especially in journalism, the more you break out of your comfort zone, the more you will be able to do something because you will experience less discomfort in doing it. Or as one journalist recalled about a summer internship experience:

    I was asked if there was anything I didn’t like to do. I said man-on-the-street stuff. Guess what I did all summer long? It wasn’t punishment, it was a way to get over the bad habit of only talking to people who were paid to talk to me. So many young journos are afraid to cold-call or just go up to someone, and you just have to do it until it doesn’t suck as much or you stop caring about someone saying no or thinking you’re stupid.

  • Learn by doing: Even things you don’t mind doing aren’t always easy, but they become more natural if you practice them over and over again. This is a lot like playing a sport or a musical instrument: It’s easy for people to marvel at the end result when that’s all they see, but a ton of behind-the-scenes work went into making the performance incredible. Michael Jordan and LeBron James didn’t wake up at age 22 and become incredible basketball players just because they felt like it. Pavarotti didn’t nail every note in La boheme the first time he tried it.
    One of the biggest problems in media writing is that most people feel they’ve been writing their whole lives. They HAVE practiced repeatedly at this craft, so it becomes incredibly frustrating when this writing doesn’t come out as easily or flawlessly as the other writing they have done. The main problem with that is in the underlying assumption that all writing is the same. It’s not. This kind of writing requires different skills and alternative approaches, so it forces you to zig instead of zag. To draw from an earlier example, Michael Jordan was the best basketball player in the world in the early 1990s, but found that all those skills didn’t make him the best baseball player in the world.
    You need to practice on the field of your sport, so to speak. Or as a journalist with international experience put it:

    At the risk of making an overly obvious point, I’d recommend just writing as much as possible. Take the Ichiro-in-batting-practice approach and do as much work as you possibly can. I work with a fair number of young, recent grad writers, and I’m always amazed at the gulf between the ones who put in a lot of hours with their student paper and the ones who didn’t. The former are just so much sharper. With them, I’m working with a journalist, not someone who has written a bit and is trying to become a journalist.

  • Employ empathy: Either because we’ve all watched way too much TV or because we’re scared to death of doing interviews, the “helicopter” approach to interacting with sources can become our resting pulse. We want to fly over to a source, get in, get what we need and get out of there as fast as possible. A lot of this can be overcome with practice, as others mentioned earlier. However, it’s not just that practice makes perfect (or close to it), but perfect practice makes perfect. In other words, if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right.
    This is where the issue of empathy comes in. If you see the person you are about to interview as basically a jar full of answers you need to open up and dig into, you’re going to have a lousy experience with the source. Instead, if you treat that person with dignity, respect and interest, you start to see the human being behind the story you need to tell. In turn, the source will start to see you as a human being as well, instead of a mosquito that is nothing more than a blood-sucking pest. As one sports journalist put it:

    When I first started, my trepidation in building sources is I didn’t know how to start the conversation. I can’t just walk up to an “off-limit source” I’ve never spoken to and expect them to answer a hard-hitting question. Start with what they did on summer vacation. Or if they have any plans for their upcoming down time… It breaks the ice and gets the source comfortable, because now they’re talking to a person, not a reporter. Wish I knew that when I first started.

    Or put more succinctly:

    “Learn how to bullshit. Practice it.“

Not every tip here will work in every situation and  you will likely find your own way through various experiences in the field. Some sources just want you to cut to the chase. Others will never like you no matter how much you effort you put into cultivating them and working with them. In some cases, no matter how much you practice, you will never come to like or enjoy certain aspects of the job. It’s all part of learning and developing skills.

Speaking of skill development, here’s something to consider from a journalist who has worked in print, web, blogs, PR and marketing. I didn’t know where to put, but I just couldn’t leave it out, so I guess I’ll end with it:

Learn to read upside down. Can’t tell you how many times that comes in handy.

Ryan Wood: An award-winning pro

Congratulations to Green Bay Packers beat reporter Ryan Wood for his award-winning story about the retirement of B.J. Raji. He was honored this week at the Associated Press Sports Editors convention in New Orleans.

Ryan was nice enough to talk about his time as a journalist for one of our “A View From a Pro” segments that is included in the “Dynamics of News Reporting and Writing” textbook. You can find his thoughts on reporting and life as an award-winning journalism in the Basics of Reporting chapter, but here’s his “best bit of advice:”

ONE LAST THING: If you could tell the students reading this book anything you think is important, what would it be?

“The most important thing for anyone entering the field is to horde as much experience as you possibly can. Get involved in student journalism. When I was in college, I lived in the newsroom. Ate there. Slept there. Pulled all-nighters doing homework there. Made my friends there. Met my wife there. The newsroom was my home. I’ve gotten emails from folks with English degrees and zero student journalism experience who wanted to know how to enter the business, just because they wanted to write. I never have anything positive to tell them. They can’t, at least not in a full-time basis. If you want to give yourself the best chance to succeed, learn the tools of the trade. Nothing prepares you for life as a professional journalist like being a student journalist.”

You can follow him at ByRyanWood on Twitter.