JRN 300: Some Problems

Some problems with pitches as of late. Problems include:

• Some people didn't turn in a pitch. Too many people,  actually. This is no time to fall behind; each weekly story is worth 7 percent of your final grade. That means missing just one weekly story can seriously dent your final grade. Don't let that be you. If you haven't, get me a pitch ASAP. I won't allow more than one makeup story submitted per week once our weekly story schedule is finished, so don't count on being able to send me a rush of stories at the end. I won't accept a late rush.
• People aren't carefully checking with their peers on story plans. I literally had one entire group pitch me basically the same story idea this week. Only the first one received was approved. Please make sure you're not stepping on each others' toes.
• People aren't carefully checking the site to make sure their pitch hasn't already been done. One pitch I received was done by a teammate just a few days ago. 
• Pitches are getting to be too business-oriented. Most people don't live their lives based on businesses; they live lives based on trends and issues. That's why early this semester we had those exercises where you went out and asked people, what's bothering them? What's frustrating them? What are they confused by? And so forth.
• Getting too many story ideas centered around businesses is usually indicator you're not reaching out to everyday people enough and you're over relying on just looking around the physical space of your beat. Looking around space is fine if you're looking for trends and issues -- why is it so dead in this downtown all the time? Traffic is horrible here; why is that? The streets are crappy; what are they gonna do about potholes? -- but we need to look more at the people in the foreground and how they are interacting with their environment and maybe a little less at the background and what businesses happen to be standing there. 

It's not unusual that at this point in the semester we're struggling for story ideas. That's because the good ideas we got from our initial site visits have all been used up, and now we're at the bottom of the barrel.

The correct way to solve this problem is to do what we did before:

• Environmental observation: visit our beats and look around, and try to notice what things stand out that are worth looking into,
• Identifying concerns of everyday people, by talking to them and polling them.
• Looking at data (Census, crime, etc.) to see what we can identify was a newsworthy topic
• Looking at records (budgets, city council meeting minutes and agendas) to see what trends and issues can be discovered there.

Stories aren't discovered in newsrooms; they are discovered by getting out in the real world. That's why news organizations have reporters; to get out there and act as scouts and spies and discover things. If we could avoid that process there would be no need for reporters at all; editors could just dream up ideas in the newsroom. 

So let's make sure that doing person-on-the-street polls wan't just something we were doing for a grade early on. Let's redo all the things we did at the start and get a fresh set of ideas so we can finish the semester strong.

As always, please see me if you have any questions or concerns.