How to ask your way
into a better story

By Sara Feijo
Bulletin Staff

Great stories feature many important elements, but the essential one is asking a lot of good questions.

That was the message of George Geers, a book publisher, and executive director of both the New Hampshire Press Association and the New Hampshire Writers’ Project, and Clynton Namuo, a correspondent for the New Hampshire Union Leader of Manchester. They spoke to about 30 journalists at a workshop titled “Better reporting as a result of asking better questions” Feb. 12 at the New England Newspaper and Press Association convention.

Geers began the presentation by stressing the importance of conducting research and being prepared for interviews.

“You have to do your homework,” Geers said. “It’s a lot easier these days to do your homework because you can go on the Internet and Google. Call somebody up on the phone or send them an e-mail. You have to do your research; go to the clips.”

Geers said journalists should spend an hour researching their topic. But, when it comes to the interview itself, he advised letting the person being interviewed do the talking.

“The idea is you ask questions and then sit and listen,” Geers said. “Chances are they are not only going to answer your question, but they’re going to give you a lot more information than you planned.”

Namuo distributed copies of two vague press releases he has seen, encouraging members of the audience to ask questions as if they were assigned to write stories based on the releases.

The first press release vaguely described the arrest of a 19 year-old man on a charge of aggravated felonious sexual assault. The second reported the investigation of a Manchester homicide.

“It seems as if we don’t ask as many questions as we have to or we really should,” Namuo said. “How often do you read a story and you wonder so many different things?”

He explained how to tackle stories and improve them by asking the right questions. He recommended reporters find a way to put the storyline together in their heads, so that they could ask what they want to know about the incident.

Namuo said reporters should not give up on a story. He recommended that they save previously-reported stories, because they can be useful in covering other stories. To accomplish that, he suggested organizing clips of old stories with Google Desktop, which catalogues a computer’s documents.

The second half of the workshop ended with a fake press conference, with Namuo playing the role of a police detective commenting on a crash off Interstate 95 in Portsmouth, N.H. Audience members seemed to be engaged and asked questions as if they were covering the story.

At the end, Namuo listed a few essential questions never asked by those in the audience, including about how names should be spelled and about dates.

POSTED 2/28/11