WORK:Finding The Left Angle And Making It Right by Anne Phyllis Pinzow

It’s been in other newspapers but for some reason it has not appeared in yours because your attention was diverted by other news stories and one person can’t keep track of everything.

That’s a truth every reporter must accept. You’re only one person and there are millions of stories occurring all the time. So, choose your stories, if you can, or stick to the ones you’re assigned.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t keep your eyes and ears open for other news. Definitely do that. In fact if you don’t you’ll probably be fired. However, remember that you work with a team. You may have gotten the lead but it’s your job to report that to your editor. Then your editor will decide if you should cover it or if another reporter should do it.

You’re a professional so IT DOESN’T MATTER WHO COVERS THE STORY, just as long as it gets covered.

So, while you were working on the breaking news that no one else had or would have until you wrote it up, another hot story broke. You missed it and so did the rest of the reporting staff.

It’s old, it’s stale, but many of your readers rely only on your paper and so the story has to be written and it must be fresh and new and have information that no one else has been able to milk out of the usual sources.

Actually, new angles are not always difficult to find if you remember Ted Sturgeon's motto which is the motto of the Sime~Gen Welcommittee: Ask the next question.

Remarkably, or not, that can take the form of the three elements that go into writing a science fiction or fantasy story "What if?, "If Only ... " and "If this goes on ... ?"

I came upon this very situation today. So just bear with me as I set the scene.

A rural area has been experiencing a great deal of development in the past decade. While their sewage is being treated in septic tanks, sewage is leaking into the aquifer and overloading drinking well purification systems. Water which is not being used by local residents flows down the local river or leeching into the aquifer with untreated sewage plus mercury which is being dumped into the local river from a northern county factory.

The solution, of course is to put all these homes on a sewer system however that is met with controversy. This is a rural community and people like it the way it is. They don’t want more development in the area and many see a sewage plant as a first step towards encouraging a population increase.

Also, a sewage plant would take at least 10 acres of land. That’s ten acres of trees which would have to be clear cut, ten acres less water shed.

Faced with this problem, politicians come up with the idea of putting the entire area on sewer lines but pumping the sewage to an existing plant in another town. Of course, this plant would have to be expanded as it is already operating at above capacity.

There is a problem, of course, to that. The town with the sewer plant has been experiencing terrible odors emanating from that plant. Also, the residents don’t want to have to have their taxes paying for the processing of another town’s sewage. Fees might be negotiated but that won’t solve the odor problem.

Local politicians stood ready to do battle, to deal and to voice their objections in loud and self-righteous voices with one goal in mind, NIMBY, (Not In My Back Yard).

As you can see, the more you examine the story, the more complex it becomes. Each problem is met with "only one viable solution" while each solution is met with controversy, the human condition being what it is.

Another solution is only found after the preceding one is found to be so objectionable, illegal or expensive that no one will stand for it.

However, the proposed sewage plant, the old one’s possible expansion and the entire problem is all old news, reported and re-reported, debated and expanded upon for weeks.

Find the angle.

First, touch base with known sources, especially the politicians who have already been interviewed. It has been known to happen that they will hold something back during initial interviews for the sole reason that they will have something different to tell another newspaper. Their goal is to get into as many newspapers as they can, as many times as they can, especially in an election year.

Listen to what the politicians say and ask them the same question several different ways. You might also lament to them that everything they’ve said has already been reported and you really need something new.

In this particular case, one politician who couldn’t answer a question out of cherished ignorance, told me that I should call the company which was hired to do the site study. Now, you’d think that all the other reporters would do something like that.

Wrong. It’s work and one thing I find is that people want to do as little work as possible. Hey, I want to do as little work as possible but luckily, that generally turns out to be a lot more work than anybody else is willing to do.

Actually, it’s not so much the willingness to do the work but the willingness to ask the question. I have less barriers to overcome in asking that next question and it is, perhaps my most valuable tool.

You see, I want to know "why." That’s it and if you think about it, most news stories will concentrate on the what, the who, the where and when but few will ever explore why.

In other words, most news stories are about "the snapshot" so they report the controversy and the different sides to the controversy without ever looking behind the arguments.

There’s you’re angle, look beyond what the politicians or participants are telling you. They all have their own agendas and will tell you what opinion they are pushing today.

A news story must have facts and so I called the company and was told that pumping the waste water to another town was not only too expensive but environmentally disastrous.

This was news!

The area had already had to shut down wells for three of the past four years because of droughts. Also, if the waste water were pumped out of the area to another town to be processed, it would not be returned. Instead it would be pumped to a local river.

Because of this, area one, in desperate need of sewers, would soon become a waste land since its ground water was not recharged. As a matter of fact, you learn, it is against state environmental practice and regulation to allow waste water to be pumped out of its aquifer basin.

There’s your headline. In fact, there’s your scoop.

While everyone else was reporting the argument, you are reporting on the situation. You followed up a lead, you asked why. Most of the time you don’t even have to ask.

I can’t count the times I’ve been told information because my source wanted to give important information to the news media but no one wanted to listen.

Also, remember, your loyalty is NOT to the politicians, it’s to the people who read the newspaper. If your article tells the truth and diffuses the situation and a lot of hot air coming from hysteria and tom tom beating, then you have done your job. In fact you’ve done a very good deed.

A great deal of news today is not about issues or facts. Those tend to get in the way of sensationalistic entertainment. However, you don’t have to be sensationalistic to be entertaining. You just have to be different, to have something no one else has.

In this particular case, the politicians were lining up to do battle, trying to shout louder than each other in their race to protect their constituencies from a possible developing situation.

But you reported that all they were doing was wasting their time. And they were trying to make political hay over a situation that in reality, did not exist. This is common, too common.

I was speaking to a town supervisor the other day who actually had an opinion based on facts which he, himself had researched and I spent a pleasant 15 minutes writing down INFORMATION.

At the end of the interview I told him that this was one of the nicest interviews I’d ever conducted and that he was one of the few people who had actually given me information and not opinion, fact and not speculation. Plus, he had made a decision and was not trying to qualify it to please opponents. Make this man President.

It didn’t matter if I agreed or disagreed, that’s not my job. But he made my job so much easier, the mark of a true professional, that I felt the need to comment.

He told me that I should feel free to call him anytime and that my name will be put on his secretary’s list for instant access.

That immediately upped my rating as a reporter. It’s another person who will take my calls, another direct contact.

Besides this obvious boost to my ego and my worth as a reporter, because he gave me solid and researched information, there are at least five more stories that I can pursue from that interview.

I found out about mercury flowing into the water from the northern county from this man. Also I was given some information on the internal controversy in the town and the history behind it.

My favorite bit of info, though useless as newsprint, was that no one else had asked him about this information.

That mercury story, because of who is dumping it, could make for a national scoop and is something I’ll tell my editor about. I might get the assignment, since I got the lead, or it might be given to someone else.

But one thing is for absolute certain. I’ll get the best stories because I write the best stories, because I have the best angles. It doesn’t take luck, it takes a touch of creativity and the effrontery, the nerve, the absolute audacity to, as Ted Sturgeon said, ask the next question.

Read the rest of Anne Phyllis Pinzow's articles on the life of a script writer making a living as a journalist.

Workshop:Finding The Left Angle And Making It Right Or How to come from a cold start and end with greatness or at the very least, a page one headline.

Workshop:Finding The Left Angle
And Making It Right
Or
How to come from a cold start and end with greatness
or at the very least, a page one headline.