OJR: The Online Journalism Review

Young Journalist with Slow Skills Fears a Fast Departure

I'm 22 and working for Public Radio. I love my new job, but I'm afraid I'm going to be forced to leave if I can't turn around stories more quickly. Any suggestions for a newbie?

Submitted by Chet McMaster

Posted: 2007-08-06

I am currently doing an internship for Chicago Public Radio, and all in all, I love it. I was excited to start although I did have some reservations since most of my experience was in print, but it turns out that I love working here even more than I thought I would. My problem is that I was originally hired under the condition that I would be here for six months. Now, two months in, I have been told by our human resources manager that whether or not I will be "invited" to stay the whole six months depends, more than anything else mentioned, on my ability to turn around stories faster. I really want to stay but I'm not sure I'll be invited to.

Pounding out stories quickly has always sort of tough for me. Almost all of my previous stories were written for my college paper or a small community paper, both of which only ran weekly and therefore had week-long deadlines. As a result, making the transition to a large metro station's deadlines hasn't been easy.

Here, I'm assigned a story around 9 and expected to be ready for editing by 1 or 2, and that's only supposed to be my first of 2-3 cut n' copies stories for the day. Regularly writing anything less than that is pretty much unacceptable, and I sometimes find myself only writing 1, maybe 2 stories for the day. I know that I'm 100% capable of doing 3+ stories daily, I just can't seem to consistently do it.

At first I struggled with the new "talky" format of radio, but now that I understand that, I just don't have any excuses. I admit that sometimes when I get edited, I tend to sulk and slow up pace instead of jumping on top of the phone to confirm a fact or run with a new, revised angle... Editing face-to-face is new to me.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to become a quicker writer? Exercises, states-of-mind... anything at all to help out? I feel like I have some mental hurdle that I just can't get over.

Sorry for such a disjointed post but I'm at work and on deadline! ;)

Responses:

From Jason Marsteller on August 9, 2007 at 5:23 PM

I had the same problem when I first started writing about 10 years ago. What made it easier for me is when I figured out that different types of stories have different sorts of flows.

That gave me the chance to develop "formulas" for different types of stories.

For instance, when I wrote about volleyball at one time, I wrote the standard lead of such and such beat such and such by #-# at location on such and such a date. Simple lead.

Then, my next paragraph would address any career or season milestones. If there wasn't anything pertinent, that paragraph then became overall stat talk. Like so and so had a double-double with 10 blocks and 10 kills.

After that, I broke down each individual game within a match, which could be up to five games.

I could usually write all of this strictly from a box score following a match. That's about 7-9 strong paragraphs.

If you are stuck in a spot where you have to bang out story after story, just figure out a formula that works (and that your editors like), and stick to it.

From Chet McMaster on August 13, 2007 at 8:37 PM

Sounds resonable enough. I'm not on a sports beat but I'm sure I could make a couple of similar templates for different story types; one for city council resolutions, one for weekend-features... Thanks, Jason.

From Jason Marsteller on August 14, 2007 at 10:04 AM

No problem. Let me know how it turns out.

From Tom Grubisich on August 15, 2007 at 3:06 PM

May be I'm not hearing you right, but I'm surprised you would be expected to turn out multiple stories daily virtually from the get-go. Your production should increase gradually, and it will happen with good and continuous mentorship. Do you have that? I think reporting is at least as challenging as bricklaying, and this is what that craft demands:

http://www.apprenticeships.training.wa.gov.au/aships/bldg-const/bricklayer.asp

Why don't you talk things over with your bosses.

From Debra Matthews on August 16, 2007 at 10:11 AM

Relax. Look in the mirror and take some deep long breaths. You are unique. What you have to give is not associated with crap and mental anquish. You are special. Control your emotions. Do your home work and just write. Homework is very important to your success. You will find that the homework you do after hours will cut your days work in half a big percent. Also all your work will be edit. So just write. Be for real and do not try to compete with the jones. Have faith in your ability and your talent. Do not feel desperate nor tempted to Steal. Be for real, make friends and write!

After that if it does not work, you are still great. Someday you'll look back and enjoy the time that you had puzzle and confuse.
Good Luck!

From Kate McLaughlin on August 30, 2007 at 2:39 PM

I suggest freewriting excercises where you DO NOT stop writing for a specific period of time. Start with 5 minutes and work up from there. When you freewrite your story, you are NOT censoring, editing, cogitating, second-guessing. All you're doing is writing. Once you've got it pn he page, then go back and fix it.

Also, you appear to have a chatty, conversational nature. Your original entry here could have been cut down by a third and still expressed your situation/concerns. It would have maded it better, too, since it'd be more succinct. Save your wordiness (even though you're very readable and your message was compelling) for e-mails to friends and family. at work, focus focus focus, produce, produce, produce.

your quality will take a hit intitally, but it will improve as you train yourself to more machine-like in your output.

keap at it. it's a process. and if the folks at chicago public radio don't want to nurture you, move on. there are a lot of places to work in the world.

From Mark Grabowski on September 7, 2007 at 10:46 PM

You're up to the task. You just need to focus.

Think back to your stories for the college and weekly papers. How much time did you actually spend on them? If you cut out all the procrastination (e.g. checking e-mail 100 times, looking at YouTube, checking scores on ESPN.com, talking to friends on your cell, watching TV) that you wasted between the time you started your story and finished it, I'm willing to bet that you spent no more than a few hours on the story per se.

You got to work on fixing the ADD. Use your time wisely and efficiently. Don't sulk or dwell on spilled milk.

Also, learn to multi-task. While you're waiting for a source to call you back for story #1, start working on story #2. Or start getting background info for a story you know you'll be covering in the future. Journalists need to be able to juggle many things at once.