By Tom Hill, Course Director and Founder, Up To Speed Journalism.

In this series of articles on reporting skills I am dealing with some of the important inter-personal skills you need to develop to be a good reporter. Today my tip is to find ways to Earn Your Contacts’ trust.

Tip #18 Earn Your Contacts' Trust

There are few phrases in the English language that are likely to inspire less confidence than, “Trust me, I’m a journalist”.

But, trust me, at some point or other you are going to have to ask your informants to take a calculated risk and confide in you.

The relationship between journalists and their sources is often a complicated one and particularly when those contacts are professional spin doctors, or media-savvy people in public life.

As a reporter you have to have your wits about you. Dealing with contacts can be like a game of cat and mouse and you have to know whether you are playing the cat or the mouse in any given situation.

So, you might have a contact who feeds you several small snippets of information to keep your attention away from the bigger story involving her organisation. Spin doctors notoriously pick news days dominated by big stories, to “bury” unpalatable announcements.

Similarly, it may be in a company’s best commercial interests to issue a “no comment” statement or to say, “we can neither confirm nor deny that we have received a buy-out offer at this stage”. This keeps interest in the story alive and rumour can fuel financial speculation and so have an influence on the price of  the company’s shares.  A foreign exchange dealer in the City once confided to me that his motto was, “buy on the rumour, sell on the news”.

However, a canny journalist will also play this game to her advantage. One way to keep one step ahead of the rest of the pack is to demonstrate that your source can rely on you. So, if you are ever told something, no matter how small, in confidence by a source, you have to make a calculation about what is more important, your source or the story. You don’t have to enter into a conspiracy of silence, but by demonstrating discretion and tact over some issues you can gradually build up a rapport and if you have read the person and the situation properly, you may become a favoured conduit for more important stories and snippets of information.

If you watch, or read, All The President’s Men, you will see that the story, which gradually gained momentum, ultimately leading to President Nixon’s impeachment, was fed by tip-offs from an anonymous source nicknamed ‘Deep Throat’. That contact put himself at considerable risk to pass on the information, but why did he choose Bob Woodward, a relatively junior general reporter on the Washington Post, rather than one of the paper’s top political correspondents?

The answer is that Woodward was not a reporter straight out of college. He had spent five years working as an officer in the US Navy, and on the staff at the White House, before turning to journalism. At the White House, Woodward met a man who would be in charge of the day-to-day running of the FBI three years later when the Watergate case was being investigated.  That man’s identity remained secret until 2005, when Deep Throat was finally identified as W.Mark Felt.  Felt died last year, aged 95, and speculation about his motives for disclosing the information will no doubt continue for many years. However, it seems likely that Felt decided to give Bob Woodward the information because he believed that the former White House aide was someone who understood the rules of the game, someone who would protect his identity and someone he could trust.

By Tom Hill, Course Director and Founder, Up To Speed Journalism.

In the latest of our series of practical tips for people who want to succeed as reporters, I’m taking a look at one of the most common mistakes people make when they first start chasing stories.

Tip #16 Don't Rely On Email

Effective communication with people is a key skill for a reporter and there is no better way to achieve that than by talking to them.

One of the worst ways to approach an interviewee is to send them an unsolicited email.

However, it is an easy trap to fall into when you are starting out as a reporter, partly because there are some myths about email’s effectiveness and convenience.

Three Myths About The Effectiveness of Email

1. By sending an email, you are doing something constructive and reaching people instantly.
2. An email is a more convenient, succinct and easy way to deal with interview requests for the busy person you are trying to reach.
3. People will get back to you.

So, what’s the reality and what are the alternatives?

Three Reasons Why Email Is A Bad Idea

1. A phone call is much quicker and you will know straight away whether the person can help you or talk to you.  You will also have an opportunity to use your best phone manner and charm as described in a previous post, something you can’t do by email.  You may also catch them off their guard, which can lead to a much better response or reaction. So, next time you sit down to write an unsolicited email, ask yourself if the real reason you are doing it is to avoid using the dreaded telephone.
2. You may think your contact would prefer to receive an email rather than a phone call, but spare a thought for the person you are trying to contact. Recent research in America suggests that the average office worker can spend one to two hours a day sorting out their inbox. Some people are so swamped by email that they leave hundreds of messages unanswered. In some large companies uncontrolled email traffic leads to circular conversations where every respondent clicks “reply all” leaving all of their colleagues on the receiving end of dozens of dreary responses. And when you add junk mail, mail-shots, spam and email scams into the mix, you will see that many people are either wary or weary of what should be a highly effective communication method.
3. You are asking your contact, or potential interviewee, to make the first move if you email them. They either have to send a reply, or pick up the phone to talk to you. You are the one who wants the information and so you should be doing the leg work. When you are up against a deadline you can’t afford to sit back and let the other person decide when, and if, they will bother to respond.

If you phone someone and they request that you send them an email, I have three tips for you.

Three Tips For Writing Effective Emails

1. Make sure you have spelt everything correctly and that it is grammatically correct. Emails are often sent in a hurry and your reputation as a journalist hangs on your ability to use the English language.
2. Make your message clear. The written word can be misinterpreted much more easily than the spoken word.
3. Keep it brief. A few lines are all you need, because the person receiving it doesn’t have all day to read it. Make sure you mention your deadline and call them again if they haven’t responded as the deadline approaches.

By Tom Hill, Founder and Course Director, Up To Speed Journalism Training.

Tip #15 Give Good Phone

Professional people skills are essential if you want to become a successful reporter. Sometimes you have to adapt or change the way you do things in your private life when you are at work. One of the key pieces of equipment for any reporter is the telephone and knowing how to use it properly is a key skill, but one that can be overlooked on many journalism courses.

Today’s top tip is: give good phone.

Soon after I started as a reporter at the Nottingham Evening Post I remember a friend and colleague of mine taking a call from a live radio show in Australia.

John Brunton’s scoop was a story everyone down under was talking about and the host had called to talk to him live from England.

Unlike many news stories it was one with a happy ending, for a few weeks at least.

A Nottingham budgie had been reunited with his distraught owners two days after disappearing from his cage when a man out walking his dog had spotted the missing bird sitting in a tree repeating his telephone number.

The headline was probably something like, “Phone Home Twee-tie”. Whatever it was, the Aussies loved it.

The budgie owed his life to his phone manner, and to that of his owners. In those days it was quite common to pick up the phone and greet the caller by saying, “Mapperley 9763”, or in the case of New Scotland Yard, “Whitehall 1212″.*

Telephone etiquette does change, but even though we live in an age where almost everyone has a mobile phone, the art of using an office telephone can be quite alien to many people starting out in journalism.

A Professional Phone Manner Is A Key Skill

If you are the least bit shy, trying out your professional phone manner for the first time in an open-plan newsroom full of noisy, eaves-dropping journalists can be a daunting task.

So here are five tips for using a phone as a professional reporter.

Making calls

Before you start, make sure you have a notepad and pen ready. If you know who you are trying to contact, have some idea of the story and what you want to ask them.

When you dial the number, and someone answers at the other end, start by saying hello and by introducing yourself and saying who you work for.  Speak clearly and sound sincere. They can’t see you, but they can tell a lot from the tone of your voice. From this point on you should use all the charm, flattery and powers of persuasion I have discussed in previous posts. Don’t be afraid to engage people in small talk, if it’s appropriate and develop a relaxed, but professional phone manner.

What you shouldn’t do is call someone and say, “Hello, is that Pete Smith? Yeah? Great. I need a quote for this story I’m doing on council tax. Will you give me one?”

If you do this, you haven’t flattered him by calling him Councillor Smith, you haven’t introduced yourself, or where you are calling from, you haven’t made a point of explaining how important his contribution to your story might be, or how important you feel the story is. And you haven’t asked for his help. So why should he bother talking to you.

Answering calls

Most news organisations have a standard greeting depending on the desk you are sitting at. It is usually something like, “Hello, newsroom.” In some places they will suggest you give your name at that point.

Any call to a newsroom could be a story for you, or for one of your colleagues, and so it is important that you convey the impression that you are working for a professional organisation.

You should find out the name of the caller, where they are calling from and why, even if your first question is simply, “How can I help you?”

Even if you are busy, and you often will be, it is important to ensure that you deal with people politely and professionally.

You need to assess whether they have a story for you, or for a colleague, and how urgent that story is. Always make sure to make a note of their name and a number where they can be reached.

Leaving messages on answering services.

If you are making a call and you are diverted to an answering service, always make sure you state your name, who you work for, your deadline and an idea of the story you are chasing. Again, tell them how great it would be to have an interview with them. Leave your own phone numbers, taking the time to repeat each one slowly. There’s nothing more annoying than having to replay an answer phone message to get down the caller’s number.

Record a sensible greeting on your own phone.

If you are asking people to call you back on your mobile phone, make sure you have a reasonably sensible greeting recorded, and not a jokey one you have done for the benefit of your friends.

Taking messages or transferring calls in the office.

If you take a call for someone else, make sure you note the caller’s details carefully and that you know how to transfer them to the person they are trying to reach. Don’t just put them on hold, because your colleague may have been trying to reach them for hours.

So what did happen to that budgie? Well, a few weeks after the Australian disc jockey called, John Brunton received another call in the newsroom.

This time it was from his feathered friend’s owners. They had taken the budgie on holiday to Skegness and sadly he had died there. However, they had thought to pop his body in the freezer at the caravan so that they could take him to a taxidermist when they returned home. And so it was that our follow-up story featured a picture of the dead budgie mounted on a telephone receiver.

My tip is to make sure you develop a good professional, telephone manner if you want to be a reporter. Otherwise, like the unfortunate budgie, you will be stuffed!

*For your contacts book: the number has now become 0300 123 1212.

By Tom Hill, Course Director and Founder of Up To Speed Journalism.

In the course of 100 posts over the next few weeks I’m looking at some of the skills, aptitudes and attitudes you need to be a good reporter.

I will devote time to specific skills for radio, television, print and online journalism, but first of all I believe it is important to focus on the ways in which we deal with people. Stories are almost invariably about people on some level, and people skills are the key to discovering those stories.

Today’s post runs counter to everything your parents may have taught you about stranger danger.

Tip #10 Talk To Strangers

In my street we have had two postmen in recent years. Sam was older than Simon. My guess is that Simon has probably spent more time in education than Sam. They were both polite and efficient and we have never had any complaints. The difference is that Sam loved to chat to everyone in the street and to know what was going on, while Simon was more shy and worked his way down the road with his iPod headphones plugged into his ears. There may be nothing to choose between them as postmen, but I know who would make the better reporter.

There is no doubt that the iPod is a wonderful invention and I’m amazed by how much the iPhone can do, but new technology will never replace traditional people skills and when you are a hunter-gatherer looking for news, ear plugs can be a distraction.

In the most extreme manifestation of social withdrawal coupled with technological obsession, Japanese psychiatrists have identified cases of hikikomori, where teenagers will retreat to their bedrooms for years at a time. That’s not a great place to launch your career as a reporter.

Journalists can find out what is going on by using Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites, but this must be coupled with a deep-seated desire to mix with people in person.

Sam the postman certainly has this desire and he also has another advantage over many of us and that is in the way he travels. Sam spends most of his working day either walking or riding his bike. You see far more on foot, or on a bike, than you do cocooned in a car, or trapped in a tube train, and you have more opportunities to meet fellow travellers and to find out what they are up to.

Of course walking takes more time and so does stopping to chat to people. However, if you build in the extra time in your day and you learn to make small talk with strangers, you will quickly find that chatter is every bit as effective as Twitter and all the other so-called social media sites put together.

Tell people you are a journalist, get into the habit of carrying a calling card you can hand out to them and give them the time of day when you see them and you will find that slowly, but surely, the man in the newsagent, or the woman in the park will start to call you and let you know what’s going on.

The writer Bill Bryson started his  journalism career at the Daily Echo in Bournemouth, where Up To Speed is based today. His witty travel writing is based on the people he meets and the observations he makes about the world he travels through. His best-selling book Notes From A Small Island is a wonderful portrait of Britain in the mid-90s and it has sold over 1.5 million copies. Bryson’s notes were all made while travelling around the country on foot or by public transport. And he spent a great deal of that time, not in solitary reflection, but talking to strangers.

Why not take a leaf out of his book, and follow in his footsteps.

By Tom Hill, Course Director, Up To Speed Journalism.

In the latest of our series of posts on careers advice for journalists and people interested in improving their reporting skills, I’m examining the importance of spending time with your contacts away from the newsroom.

Tip #8 Enjoy Spending Time With Contacts

There’s an ugly phrase used at the BBC and because it’s the BBC it has a TLA (that’s a three-letter acronym). UGC stands for user-generated-content, which means stories, audio clips, pictures or videos sent in by viewers, readers or listeners.

When I first worked as an evening newspaper reporter, not long after the era depicted in Life On Mars, the best stories were often BGC – or Boozer Generated Content. Except that we didn’t have an acronym for it.

The reporters on the Nottingham Evening Post had their own room in the Blue Bell pub with a sign saying, Press Bar, which you could see across the road as you made the morning calls to the police, fire and ambulance control rooms at 7am.

Very often, the younger reporters would finish bashing out the nibs and fillers about car fires, chip-pan fires, minor accidents and petty crimes gleaned from the emergency services’ official sources, only to see a splash headline all across the front page, as the first edition rolled off the presses at 10am.

The byline, at the top of the stories the press officers had failed to mention, was usually, “Tony Donnelly, Chief Reporter”. So how did Tony, who sadly passed away last year, do it?

The answer was that he spent hours of his own time, outside the usual 9-5 office routine, with his contacts in CID. Some of that time was spent in the pub or in the police social club with its obligatory Nine Pints Of The Law poster. The city’s detectives knew Tony as a person, not as a faceless voice on the end of a telephone and at times they probably trusted him more than their own press officers.

This is not a lament for the lost days of journalism, or for the decline of the great British pub, but a reminder that stories come from people and that you have to spend time with those people if you want to find real, original news.

The sauce may have trickled out of newsrooms over the last few years, but to be a good reporter you have to devote time to getting to know your sources.

The BBC’s award-winning Business Editor Robert Peston was starting out as a reporter in the City at about the time I was in Nottingham and he probably breathed a huge sigh of relief when Perrier became the tipple of choice at business meetings.

But you can be sure that he has worked his way through hundreds of lunches, breakfast briefings and finger buffets, all the while gleaning snippets of information, useful insights and trusted contacts between the canapés, croissants and cappuccinos.

These contacts, coupled with the work ethic and drive of a driven workaholic, mean that throughout the financial meltdown of the last two years, Robert Peston has broken exclusive after exclusive for the BBC.

Working lunches have made him a legend in his own Crunch time. I’m not sure if the acronym-ists at White City have thought of it yet, but they could learn a great deal from SGC – Schmoozer Generated Content.

By Tom Hill, Founder of Up To Speed Journalism Training.
In this series of blog posts on journalism careers, I am currently looking at some of the ’soft’ people skills journalists need to develop in order to become successful reporters. Today we’re looking at one of the most important traits of a good reporter – charm.

Tip #7 Turn On The Charm

When you first tell people you are a journalist you are likely to get one of two reactions – sudden interest in your exciting job, or, more often, a guarded suspicion that you are someone who is not to be trusted.

So, when you set about digging up a story, it is not always going to be easy. People will not always want to co-operate. They may be too busy, they may be distrustful and they may be genuinely worried that talking to you could cost them their jobs or their reputations.

Reporters have strategies for dealing with this. They quickly develop a thick skin and realise that there is no point in taking rebuffs personally. If the interview is important they also have to find ways to persuade people to talk to them.

Journalists are sometimes referred to as “hard-nosed hacks”. This gives the impression that they regularly bully or cajole reluctant interviewees into speaking to them. However, good reporters tend to find that charm and persistence produce much better results than menace and bluster.

Good reporters have an ability to put people at their ease, to soften them up, and to explain how publication of a story can benefit an interviewee and other people with similar experiences to that interviewee.

This may sound easy in theory, but difficult, or impossible, in practice. However, there are some simple rules of thumb, which can help to secure interviews.

• Find out the person’s name, use it repeatedly in conversation and ensure you spell it correctly. We all love the sound of our own name.
• Treat interviewees with deference and respect. You may not personally have a huge amount of respect for district councillor Joan Smith, but in your professional dealings with her, always remember to call her, “Councillor Smith”. However much she hides behind a veil of false modesty, the chances are Mrs Smith feels immensely proud of being a councillor. We all like to feel important.
• Treat every one you meet professionally in the same way. If you arrive at a company headquarters prepared to charm the boss, but treat the receptionist like dirt, you won’t get very far. Very often the receptionist can be the toughest obstacle you have to overcome in reaching that important person. Important people talk to their staff and may well hear how you behave when you are dealing with people who work for them. We all deserve respect.
• When you make an appointment to meet someone, make sure you are on time. You are in the business of persuading people to lend you some of their valuable time and so don’t waste their time. We all value our time.
• It may sound like a piece of advice your Mother would give you in primary school, but look smart and professional. First impressions really are important. You have to win the trust and confidence of your interviewees if you want them to share information or opinions with you. We all make snap judgements about people based on their appearance.
• And finally, remember that all of the above can be achieved if you meet someone in person, some of the above will work if you are good on the phone and none of the above can be achieved by email.

So, if you are chasing interviews, hit the road or pick up the phone, but only send an email when you are asked to and only then after you have asked for a phone or face-to-face interview first.

Up To Speed Journalism’s Founder Tom Hill gives careers advice on becoming a journalist in a new series of posts on the Up To Speed blog.

We hope you find the advice helpful. Over the next few weeks we’ll be covering a range of topics including tips on how to write for print, online, radio and television. In the first few posts, we’re looking at the initial steps you need to take to become a journalist including the all-important task of winning a place on the right course. Today we look at the traits you may need to succeed.

Tip #4 Believe In Yourself

If you’re considering a career in journalism, you’ve probably asked yourself more than once, “Have I got what it takes?”

That is certainly a good starting point. But what answers should you be looking for?

As with any walk of life, journalism attracts a broad range of people and most newsrooms have their fair share of “characters”.

However, it is possible to observe some common aptitudes and attitudes among journalists. I’ll come back to some of these in more detail in future posts on the Up To Speed Blog over the next few weeks, but here’s a simple list in the meantime:

1. A genuine curiosity and interest in other people and their stories. Everyone has a story to tell if you have the curiosity to find it.

2. An empathy for your readers and an ability to see those stories through their eyes and to ask the questions they would like answered.

3. A way with words. It may sound obvious, but sometimes people who like the idea of meeting famous people, or sitting in the press box at a premiership football ground, can forget that there is no such thing as a free perk in journalism.  If you really enjoy the process of writing about people you have met and events you have witnessed, then there’s every chance you will enjoy your life as a journalist. But you do have to write those stories and write them well.

4. Creativity and imagination. It may not always seem that way as deadlines loom, but one of the biggest privileges journalists enjoy is the opportunity to use their brains creatively. Lateral thinking is encouraged and journalists are lucky enough to see the products of their labours produced on a printed page or a television or computer screen, or to hear it broadcast on the radio.

5. A can-do approach to your work and life. The phrase, “That’s so not fair” is never heard, or at least never tolerated, in newsrooms. It’s more a case of when the going gets tough, the tough get going. When snow brought large parts of Britain to a halt this month, the journalists didn’t cower at home under their duvets, they made their way through the snow and ice to stand shivering and broadcasting by the side of motorway junctions so that millions of television viewers could find out what was going on.

6. Self-belief is also essential. If you genuinely think that you possess the first five traits, then you can realise your dreams if you have confidence and you believe in yourself.

Paradoxically, I once read that the trait a newsreader most admired in two of the BBC’s most senior reporters of the time was “insecurity”. What he meant was that they were perfectionists who were always worried their work would not be good enough.  That ability to criticise yourself and your work and to strive to be better every day is essential, if you are to reach the top. Another reason senior reporters can be insecure is fear. They are afraid that a young reporter with more energy, drive and ambition will come along and steal their top-dog mantle. Who knows, that could be you?

Piers Morgan, NCTJ Trained Journalist

By Tom Hill, Course Director, Up To Speed Journalism

It's been a rollercoaster decade for Piers Morgan, but he has ended the Noughties on the top of his game: fronting hit TV shows on BBC1, ITV and in the USA.

Six years after parting company with the Daily Mirror, he has written two best-selling books about his days in national newspapers and he divides his on-screen time between appearing as a celebrity panellist on both Britain’s Got Talent and its counterpart in the USA, and fronting programmes that allow him to be 21st Century cross between Alan Whicker and Michael Parkinson.

Piers Morgan, 44, began his career as a trainee journalist in weekly newspapers in South London after taking his Preliminary Exams in Media Law, News Writing, Public Affairs and Shorthand on a one-year course at Harlow College in Essex. The same NCTJ qualifications can now be taken with Up To Speed, which is based in its own training centre off the newsroom at the Daily Echo in Bournemouth.

His big break came with a job on the Sun where the editor was Kelvin MacKenzie, another former NCTJ trainee. Under Mackenzie, Piers was given the Bizarre column. Using this position he was to reinvent the world of celebrity journalism from 1989 to 1994 when he left to become Editor of the News of the World. A year later he moved onto the Daily Mirror.

Ellie Jones, Up To Speed Celebrity Journalism

Ellie Jones, 22, who started the Up To Speed course a year ago, managed to make her own mark in celebrity journalism while she was with us. Several of her interviews with celebrities including Will Young were published in Listed magazine during her time on the course.
A selection day for Up To Speed’s next course takes place on January 6th. The course runs from February 22nd to the end of July.
If you would like to apply, all you have to do is click Piers Morgan.

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