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By Jim Stasiowski
It was a very busy day, and I really had no time to talk to a politician’s aide, but my boss said let’s be polite and give him a few minutes.
So three of us – my boss, a colleague and I – listened as the smiling young man listed, by rote, his politician’s accomplishments.
I was paying attention with only half my brain; the other half was focused on the problems I had yet to solve in the newsroom.
I heard the young man say, “… and we didn’t even have to raise taxes.”
Seated to my right, my colleague stiffened and, absent an accusatory tone, challenged the flack in two well-reasoned sentences that felt like a welcome wind dispersing thick smoke.
In an instant, I forgot the newsroom struggle and focused instead on how the flack would respond.
Not well. He futilely tried to wriggle free of the hook my colleague had so deftly set. The sure sign he was in distress: At least five times, he said my colleague had raised “a fair point.”
Lesson learned from when I have tried, equally futilely, to wriggle free from an accurate accusation from Sharon, my wife of 43 years: When the accused keeps repeating himself, he is guilty.
That incident came at a perfect time for me. Our newsroom has been conducting a series of seminars aimed at improving our reporting, writing, creativity and interviewing. Mere days after the flack gagged at my colleague’s challenge, I was leading an interviewing seminar, and I was able to use the incident as an example of how a savvy journalist doesn’t have to use waterboarding to get a source to squirm.
My colleague used sheer logic and preparation. He probably knew the topic better than the flack did, and his two-sentence challenge was presented in quasi-syllogism form: If your man thinks A, then obviously he is ignoring B.
Logic and preparation.
Too often we think of interviewing as a way to gather facts. Sure, we need information, but really what we want an interview to produce is insight, a clear view of not only what the source does and says, but also how he or she came to a decision, what forces are at play as people try to either solve or create problems.
One of my favorite newspaper accomplishments came in a story almost nobody read.
It was a political story. A powerful source I had covered extensively was in the position to hand out an easy yet lucrative patronage position. Over a period of days, I sat and pondered, evaluating the possible candidates, their merits and drawbacks.
Who was the logical recipient?
It came to me in a flash, and I was so excited, I called my source at 6 a.m., awakening him. I barely even said “Hello” before I blurted out the name of the person I was sure would get the job.
My source was silent; had he fallen back asleep?
Finally, he said, “Who told you?”
I said, “Nobody. I figured it out.”
He was impressed. My story was a statewide scoop, but as my editor acknowledged, “Nobody really cared about it.”
Why do I care so much about an obscure story and a quick meeting with a politician’s flack?
Because in our haste to get news stories, in our quest to reveal hidden facts, we sometimes forget to think. We sometimes get enamored of the surface story and ignore what prodded most of us to get into newspapers in the first place.
A pal of mine once described it this way: “We’re outsmarting the smart guys.”
That flack had a perfectly rehearsed routine: Boast about the boss, and emphasize that taxes wouldn’t be raised, a surefire winning slogan. But he didn’t take into account that my colleague would have taken the care to have a rebuttal ready.
My long-ago source thought he had the news perfectly disguised: Talk about the appointment to only a few closely held confidants, and count on reporters to wait for a carefully orchestrated press conference. But he didn’t take into account that enough clues were available for a pieced-together conclusion.
Sometimes we come up with an excellent lead and declare ourselves superior writers. Other times, we make two dozen phone calls to ferret out a single gleaming fact and think we’ve out-Woodward-Bernsteined Woodward and Bernstein.
To be sure, those are satisfying moments.
But we need to spend more time thinking instead of scurrying. When we’re so busy making phone calls or organizing a newsroom, we can lose sight of the delicious thrill of making a mere “fair point.”
THE FINAL WORD: Why is the store a “restaurant,” but the owner a “restaurateur”? What happened to the “n”?
The root is “restaurer,” a French verb meaning “to restore.” The present participle is “restaurant” – does that look familiar? – “restoring,” which is what a restaurant does. But, “restaurator” means “one who restores,” that is, the owner.
Jim Stasiowski, a managing editor of the Rapid City Journal, welcomes your questions or comments. Write to 1122 City Springs Road, Rapid City, S.D., 57702.