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

Over the last few weeks I’ve been looking at some of the key skills a reporter needs to develop. The posts so far have been about people skills, because part of the formula for success is, “who you know”. After this post, which is about putting all those contacts together in one safe place, I will move on to some more specific, practical skills, because “what you know” is the other half of the winning formula.

Tip #23 Keep A Contacts Book

One of the great things about being a journalist is that you don’t have to take a briefcase home with you every night, full of paperwork to read for the next morning.

However, it does help to have big pockets with room enough for a reporter’s notebook, a pen and your contacts book.

An extensive, well-maintained and up to date contacts book is a vital part of your equipment when you are covering daily news stories.

On the morning of May 12th 1994, the Labour Party Leader John Smith died suddenly, aged just 55.

On the Lunchtime News at ITN, the team had to react quickly to secure key political figures to give their reaction to the tragedy. The speed of ITN’s response was partly down to one producer and his contacts book. His job was to book guests to appear on the programme, and over the months and years before this date, he had made a point of collecting their numbers. Not just work numbers, but mobile numbers, home numbers and pager numbers.

As soon as the news broke, he hit the phones and ITN had every one of those guests live on air before the BBC. ITN won a Royal Television Society Award for its coverage of this major political event.

Incidentally, outside the world of news, it may seem strange for journalists to win awards for their reaction to a family tragedy. However, as I mentioned in my last post, those journalists have in the past had to report the death and disappearance of their own colleagues with the same speed and professionalism.

One of John Smith’s daughters, Sarah, was working as a producer at the BBC at the time. She has since joined ITN, where she is Washington Correspondent for Channel 4 News.

Sarah Smith, Channel 4 News. (c) Esthr

On a lighter note, a couple of years later my own contacts book came to the rescue of another producer on the Lunchtime News, who was chasing a story about the football star Paul Gascoigne.

Gazza’s childhood friend Jimmy Gardner had always kept an eye on the star footballer, even moving to Rome so that the two Geordies could go fishing together when Paul had finished training sessions for Lazio.

The tabloids had picked up on the friendship and revelled in Jimmy’s nickname – Five Bellies.

Don’t ask me how, but back in 1996 I had Jimmy’s home number in my contacts book and so I passed it over to my friend Chris, who had what Jamie Oliver would call a “pukka” Home Counties accent. Chris called the number and the conversation went something like this:

Newcastle: Hello.

London: Is that Mr Gardner?

Newcastle: It is, man.

London: Mr Jimmy Gardner?

Newcastle: Aye. How can I help you?

London: Well, I’m from ITN and I’m writing a story on Paul Gascoigne and I just wanted to check the facts out with you.

Newcastle: Oh, no, no, no, man. It’s me son you want, Five Bellies. And I’m afraid he’s out. Can you call back later?

On this occasion, the contacts book may not have helped to win an award, but it did allow us to follow the story up more quickly and to gain an intriguing insight into life in the Gardner household.

If you are a specialist writer, for instance working as a Showbiz Reporter, your contacts book can literally be what secures you a better job ahead of other journalists.

So, from your first day as a reporter start gathering those numbers and keeping them in a contacts book. You never know when they may come in handy. Today’s backbencher may become Prime Minister in a few years and unknown recording artists have a habit of becoming world-famous overnight sensations.

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, Up To Speed Journalism.

Tip #13 Become A Detective

In the latest in this series of blogs on the skills that will serve you well as a reporter, I urge you to become a detective.

Mist shrouded the dark surface of the river and stabbed at my lungs as I turned off the towpath and came face to face with a man toting a submachine gun.

I knew straight away that I was onto a story. The men I had discovered on my early morning jog were counter-terrorist police investigating an IRA bomb attack. I arrived on the scene as they were digging up some semtex high explosives in an allotment.

A year later I sat at the press bench in an imposing court room at the Old Bailey as a judge sentenced three men to 35, 25 and 10 years respectively for the bombing of the Warrington Gas Works.

I had stumbled across a story by chance, and as a reporter I was able to follow it to its conclusion in the courts. Luck had played a part in finding the story, but it was the sort of thing that happened to me quite often when I was a reporter.

You will find stories when you are looking for them obsessively and when you are using your eyes, your ears and your contacts in the hunt for clues in the same way that a good detective should.

When you are covering a small town, always looking for stories about it, its name will leap out at you from any piece of text, no matter how small the font. That’s how, as someone who can’t speak a word of German, I once came back from a holiday in Switzerland with a front-page lead for my local paper. I gave the Swiss newspaper no more than a cursory glance, but spotted the words “Colwyn Bay” buried in the German prose. A friend translated the rest for me and I had a Welsh angle on a Zurich murder, a crime story we hadn’t picked up on back in North Wales.

Sometimes, real detectives can become a little irritated by the “armchair detective” theories of crime reporters. I remember a friend of mine having one of his theories about a fatal arson attack shot down at a police conference in the morning, only to find the woman he had suspected, confessing her crime to him in the afternoon.

However, detective instincts should not merely be reserved for crime stories. Fascinating historical features can be unearthed if you are prepared to follow a trail of clues through the dusty records at your local archives, and readers often appeal for help from reporters when trying to track down long-lost friends, relations and even pets.

Seven years after Victorian explorer David Livingstone went missing while trying to find the source of the River Nile, the New York Herald sent a reporter, who originally came from North Wales, to track him down.

In November, 1871, after eight long, hard months that reporter, Henry Morgan Stanley, was able to start his interview with the immortal question, “Dr Livingstone, I presume?”

Stanley had grown up in a grim Welsh workhouse before joining the merchant navy. As a teenager he jumped ship in New Orleans, and was to serve on both sides in the American Civil War, before finding an outlet for his adventurous spirit, dogged determination and detective instincts in journalism.

There will always be room in journalism for people who can apply their initiative, drive and can-do approach to a problem and come back with the story against all odds.

By Tom Hill, the founder and course director of Up To Speed Journalism.
In this series on journalism careers I’m taking a look at some of the skills you need to develop to become a good reporter.

Tip #11 Make The Most Of Meetings

I will be discussing the craft skills used in broadcasting, print and online in future posts, but I’m starting out with more generic tips that can be helpful for all reporters.
Today, my advice is to attend more meetings.

The words “meeting” and “committee” can conjure up images of boredom, doodling and hot air, but it doesn’t always have to be that way. Take this picture. It shows men in suits, sitting around a table, at a shareholders’ meeting in Nebraska.
You may think, big deal! But look more closely at the picture and you will see that this is no ordinary business meeting. Two of the men in the picture are the richest two men in America, and they are playing cards.
That’s how Warren Buffett and Bill Gates like to relax when they get together at the annual shareholders’ meeting of Berkshire Hathaway. Twenty thousand shareholders  gather annually at the event, a convention which has been described as a pop festival for capitalists.
If you attend this meeting as a reporter, and you land interviews with Warren and Bill, people will want to read your story.
On a more day-to-day level, public meetings can be a source of good stories and contacts for journalists.

It may sound obvious, but a reporter’s job is to go out and find out what is going on and to report what other people have to say.

At public meetings people come together to voice their concerns, to make decisions and to debate important issues. Their quotes on these subjects can make great copy.
Verbatim reports of these meetings were the bread and butter of local newspapers a hundred years ago. Nowadays, journalists are more selective and try to find tasty items, which will affect or entertain their readers, rather than producing an account of the meeting itself.

If you are a journalist with a new patch to cover, whether it is a town in rural England, or the capital city of a foreign country, it is important to identify the key decision-makers and to look for opportunities to attend public meetings where they will be speaking.

This may sound like a simple plan, but it can be difficult in practice, particularly if you are expected to produce several stories a day. Meetings often take place in the evenings and they can sometimes go on for several hours. Some meetings can simply be an ongoing debate about issues, which remain unresolved for months leaving you struggling to find a top line or to write an intro.

However, attending meetings in person does have its advantages, even if you have to go in your own time.
• you will find stories that you would otherwise have missed;
• you will have an opportunity to meet decision-makers, such as councillors and officials, in person;
• these face-to-face meetings with people, at a time and in a place that suits them, are excellent opportunities for news reporters to put their people skills to good use and to salt away the contact numbers and details they are bound to need at a later date;
• as those contacts become more familiar, it will also be easier for the reporter to find out which meetings will be worth attending in person.

Some would argue that the reporting of the decisions made by our elected representatives, either at local or national level, is a vital cornerstone of British democracy.

The Eighteenth Century philosopher and politician Edmund Burke coined the phrase, the Fourth Estate, to describe the journalist’s role in a democracy and his writings partly inspired the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to a free press. In both cases the role of the reporter is to shed the light of publicity on the machinations of government and to act as a watchdog ensuring that decisions are made fairly and in the best interests of the citizens.
And if you ever need a reminder of this while you are covering a long-winded council meeting, then why not check out the Newsnight website and watch some of Jeremy Paxman’s famous cross-examinations.

Tip #9 Be Determined

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

Back in 1969, the war correspondent Nicholas Tomalin wrote a piece in the Sunday Times, which has been quoted frequently ever since.

The Cambridge English graduate, who was to die covering the Yom Kippur War four years later, gave a self-deprecating assessment of his profession.

“The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability.”

Journalists may require the cunning of rats, and sometimes the curiosity of cats, to find out about people and their stories, but they are more often compared to dogs, thankfully.

Collectively, reporters are referred to as the press pack and individually they are sometimes described as newshounds.

On big stories, or in places where reporters frequently gather in groups, such as the Lobby in Westminster, journalists may get together to chew over the facts and can sometimes come to a collective decision on the angle of the story.

Hunting outside that pack can be rewarding, but it can also be risky, because there is always a chance that you will miss the angle or the story.

The idea of hunting, or sniffing out stories, also conjures up other canine metaphors. Tracking the scent of a story, often in the face of obstacles put in place by those who want their secrets to remain buried, requires dogged determination, patience and hard work. Teasing out the facts, and cornering the reluctant interviewee, can sometimes require the tenacity of a terrier.

Reporters must not be put off the scent by a rebuff or a failure to answer a call, and on some stories journalists have to work painstakingly through pages of dense and baffling waffle to discover the truth.

A classic example of this is the Daily Telegraph’s investigation into MPs’ expenses last year. A small and dedicated team of reporters retired to a “bunker” away from the main newsroom for days to sift through every detail of every expense.  They had to spot stories, but also to understand and explain the complicated financial manoeuvres made by the country’s elected representatives. It was these reporters, and not those making the expenses claims, who coined the phrase to “flip” properties.

You can see a depiction of this kind of dogged determination to root out a political scandal, by two reporters who chose to hunt away from the main pack, in All The President’s Men, the 1976 film about Watergate.

It’s a film, which stands the test of time. You see reporters Woodward and Bernstein, pounding the streets, bashing the phones and sifting laboriously through library catalogues in search of the key facts. And you see them persevering despite the threats of those in authority, the sneers of some of their colleagues and the doors slammed in their faces.

It’s amazing what reporters will do for a front-page splash and a pat on the back.

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.

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

Professional journalists need to be able to turn their hand to any branch of the profession whether it be print, online or broadcast. All of these craft skills are taught on Up To Speed’s digital journalism fast-track at the Bournemouth Daily Echo and I will cover them in future blog posts. However, for the next few days I want to concentrate on the so-called “soft skills” all reporters need to possess.

Tip #6 Be Curious

It is easy to start your life in journalism with a strong desire to write only about the people you know and the issues of interest to you. That is natural. We are all more interested in what happens in our own lives than in the lives of others. However, to succeed as a journalist you need to write stories that are of interest to large audiences or groups of readers. To do this you need to become a different person and to turn your attention to the lives of others instead.

You need to be curious about other people and to develop a genuine fascination for what makes them tick. You need to develop skills in talking to people to enable you to winkle these stories out of them and to discover a nose for news that will allow you to evaluate which of those stories will be of interest to the widest possible audience of your publication’s readers.

A common question to be asked when you are a journalist is, have you interviewed anyone famous? Sometimes these interviews can be the most memorable ones, but they can also be frustrating, especially if you are confronted by an impatient prima donna with a PR team in tow. The most rewarding interviews are often with so-called “ordinary people” with fascinating stories to tell.

I was talking to a friend called Peter Jackson the other day, who must have interviewed many celebrities during his time as editor of TV Times, The Sunday Times Magazine and Elle. The story he told me last week was quite different, but no less remarkable.

“When I was a young reporter I was given the job of interviewing interesting people in the small town where I was working and, despite my protests, the editor insisted on calling these pieces Jackson’s Jaunts,” said Peter.

“Well, I’d done all the obvious people and had run out of ideas. So, I headed off with my notebook and pen to see what I could find. In the end I found a man putting up a billboard poster and convinced myself that I could get something out of this if I tried. He told me all about the challenges of the job, quipping that it wasn’t a good idea to step back and admire your work when you were up a ladder. I wrote it all down and then he let slip that in the war he had been on the ground when the first atomic bomb was dropped. He had been a prisoner of war and was swept out to sea by the tsunami that followed. The man had washed up on a beach several miles down the coast, but he had survived when 140,000 people hadn’t. I knew then that I had a great story.”

Earlier this year, cancer finally claimed the life of a frail 93-year-old man in Japan. If you had bumped into the slightly deaf former schoolteacher last year, would you have thought to strike up a conversation with him? If you had, you would have stumbled across a remarkable story. Last year the director of Avatar James Cameron flew to Japan just to talk to him. The reason is that “Lucky” Yamaguchi was the only man known to have survived the atomic bombs at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

People often ask where all the news in the newspapers, or on google news, comes from. Sometimes, it is the simple reporting of events, but in most cases news comes from curious journalists talking to people, finding out what makes them tick and telling their stories.

In the next post, I’ll discuss ways in which reporters can break the ice with new interviewees and contacts.