I dare you to dissect this story
Last week I was up in front of a classroom of undergrads taking an intro level journalism class at Temple University. It's the first time I've ever taught a full class. I've been in more than my fair share of college and graduate school classes, but none of them were about journalism. I learned on the job, like most of the reporters I know.
I was nervous. These young people are incredible (or nuts) enough to be considering our line of work understanding that it's likely to be tough, underpaid, and under attack. I wanted to be appreciative and encouraging. But I also wanted to challenge them. If these folks are learning the conventions of our industry, I hope they will question them every single step of the way.
The main point I wanted to get across was that most of the information news organizations pass along is of dubious value. If we want to do better, and heed the call to equip, rather than inform, we need clarity around what kind of information is both valuable and actionable. Here's the exercise I did to help us engage with that question. For the Temple exercise, I picked two recent local Philly news articles. One was about how leaders of immigrant serving organizations felt about the Presidential election. The other about a subsidized sports arena project proposed for downtown. But here, I'll pick on a piece I wrote.
Read the first few paragraphs of a news story.
Mark every sentence with a “V” if it includes valuable information. Mark every sentence with an “A” if it contains actionable information. If it includes neither, don't make any marks. I'll do that here with the first two grafs of this story, part of an investigation we did with The Markup.
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Crime doesn’t explain why Detroit’s auto insurance rates are so high
Car insurance costs in Detroit, at an average of $5,300 a year (V), are too expensive for many in the city to afford, and the question is why.
Auto theft and break-ins are certainly higher in Detroit than in much of the state, but crime alone does not explain (V) the city’s dubious honor of having higher insurance rates than any other big city in the country (V).
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This might not seem too bad, I found three "V's" right off the bat. But things go downhill quickly. The next graf only has one example of valuable information. The next two grafs don't have any. I didn't mark an actionable piece of information in the entire story.
Some stories have to help create a record, and that is the main function they serve. This was a novel investigation designed to do just that. Still, I knew at the time it felt less useful than a lot of the work I do. I wish I would have thought of this exercise before I wrote this story. I would have made myself justify a lack of valuable or actionable information to our audience.
Do you have any tips or tricks for measuring the value of your reporting while you're still in the reporting or writing process? Please, let me know. And keep your chin up and have a good week.
