Think about the difference between two stories about the aftermath of a tornado. One includes comments from “a long-time resident;” in the other we hear from a person who is named and we learn exactly how long she’s lived there. Which one better conveys a real sense of loss? Without details, a story sounds and feels generic and therefore has less impact.

Sometimes, the details are clearly visible in the video and don’t need to be repeated in narration. But if the video is unclear or unavailable, carefully chosen words can fill the gap. This story by KARE reporter Boyd Huppert shows how it’s done.

Did you notice these details?

1. Where the children were sitting. Not just their location in the car but the specific type of seats they were strapped into.

2. What the father did. Not just his work but how he met his wife and where he volunteered. Also notice the rule of 3s in action.

3. How much the chain and clip cost. Spelling that out makes the cost of the accident really hit home. Notice that Boyd saves that particular detail for the end.

And did you notice the parallel parking in the trooper’s first sound bite? Never has the word “yeah” been more laden with meaning.

I’m sure someone will comment that it’s easy to include details when you get five minutes to tell a story. True enough. But what takes skill is choosing the right details to make characters real and emotion hit home. And that skill, even used just once in a 1:10 package, can improve any story of any length.

A couple of additional points about this story. It’s a great case study in the value of follow-ups. The accident on Memorial Day weekend three years ago had been big local news. The follow-up shared a valuable safety lesson just before the holiday.

Also, Boyd says he had tracked down the cell phone number of the woman who was driving the truck with the trailer and made the call expecting the usual hang-up or no comment. “I was stunned when she agreed to the interview,” he says. “It’s why we always ask, isn’t it?”

Here’s my slightly edited rundown of favorites from her list:

1. Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
2. Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___. And ever since that day, ______.
3. Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
4. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
5. Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
6. When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
7. Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
8. Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
9. Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
10. Give [Let] your characters [express] opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
11. Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
12. No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
13. You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
14. Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie [story] you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
15. What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

More wisdom from the Pixar family comes from Andrew Stanton, who wrote the three Toy Story movies, Wall-E and Finding Nemo. “Storytelling is joke telling,” he says. “It’s knowing your punch line.” And the greatest story commandment, according to Stanton: Make me care. I couldn’t agree more.

Beware: some language in the video is NSFW.

Thanks to Aerogramme Writers’ Studio, a new blog from Australia, for sharing the links!

Brandon Mercer, news director at KTXL in Sacramento, has developed a checklist to help his newsroom figure out what to break when and where. Among the key questions is the type of story and its relative value to the TV or online audience.

“If it’s newsworthy, you have to post it,” Mercer says. “If it’s got viral potential, you want to post it.  If it has ratings potential only, you don’t post it.”

So breaking news that everyone’s going to have eventually gets posted immediately, without question. A feature with amazing video that could get picked up everywhere gets posted, too. But an exclusive interview that’s likely to be of interest only to the local audience would be promoted online and in social media without disclosing details, and the full story would be held for air.

It gets tricky, though, when a story is of more than one type, or as Mercer puts it, when the Venn diagrams intersect. Those stories require a conversation and the TV and online EPs have to make the decision together. If they can’t, the news director steps in.

Most stories that are posted online are fed to all social media platforms at the same time. But in some cases, one platform might take priority over another. Here’s KTXL’s approach to different types of stories:

• Breaking news: Twitter, then website
• Complex stories of huge community interest: Website, then Twitter
• Photos: Facebook, then website
• Raw video: Online video player
• Discussions and newsmakers: Google+ hangouts

Want an example of online video that went viral? 

Yep. Bird poop. CNN loved it. “If we’re first to get it into the video player, we become the ‘primary source’ and the major newspapers, networks, and affiliates will begin embedding our video player,” Mercer says.  ”If we’re late on video?  Even our newspaper partners will embed our competitors’ video.”

Computer remote image via Shutterstock

In a piece for the IRE Journal, Callaway shared these tips:

1. Keep an electronic “case file” of notes for every project. Put documents that have not yet been scanned in a file folder with the same label as the case file.

2. File public records requests and gather interviews for big pieces while working on short-term stories.

3. Make sure your tip line system is user-friendly and recruit help for call backs from interns or local college students.

4. Log tips by subject in a database so you can quickly find “go-to” interviews on the topic of the day.

5. Use social media when looking for victims or input on a story. Callaway finds posts on her Facebook page to be particularly useful.

Here’s a Callaway story that came from a single tip:

Callaway routinely files open records requests and mines the results for quick turn stories, like a report on the accuracy of airport luggage scales. The data came from FOI requests to regulators in three states.

People are just as important as public records, of course, when it comes to tracking consumer stories. Here are a few of Callaway’s favorite sources:

• Consumer attorneys who can connect you with victims and share evidence to fill video needs.
• Liquidators who sell off what a con man has bought with victims’ money.
• Economic crimes division officers within law enforcement agencies who may be willing to share information about cases they are working on.

Putting TV clips on the Web is a no-brainer, says NBC News chief digital officer Vivian Schiller, but it’s not a game changer. What is? No one really knows yet, but there’s lots of experimentation underway.

Schiller told the Beet-TV Big Data Summit that she’s watching it all closely–everything from all-video start-ups like Now This News to the online news-talk channel Huffington Post Live. And she indicated that NBC plans to do more with original “web-native video content” over the course of the next year as it redesigns NBCNews.com as a “rich journalism destination.”

This is the interactive Schiller mentioned that shows gun deaths over MLK weekend. It’s an example of a story extracted from data that ties in to a network-wide project on guns in America.

Voice coach Ann Utterback says she keeps running into a relatively new speech problem called “vocal fry,” especially among young women.

It’s been compared to “Valley Girl lift” in that it tends to happen at the ends of sentences. Instead of the rising tone that made all those would-be Valley Girls turn every sentence into a question, vocal fry adds a raspy, gravelly quality. It sounds a little like bacon frying. And just like Valley speak, it’s not innate, it’s learned.

At the end of sentences it usually indicates that breath supply is low, and the pitch is near the bottom of the pitch range.  Some speakers have glottal fry elements throughout their speech.  Normally, however, a glottal fry will begin a few words before the end of a sentence. The pervasiveness of glottal fry with young women may be an adapted style that helps them fit in and connects them to stars that are using this style of speech.

Don’t think you’ve ever heard it? Don’t be so sure. This NBC story is full of examples of pop stars with glottal fry and college students who sound just like them.

What’s the solution? Utterback says better breath support and a slight increase in pitch will usually take care of glottal fry.

Thompson shared his keys to efficient storytelling at the 2013 Kentucky News Photographers Association conference. Set yourself up for creative storytelling, he advised, by knowing what you need, how to get it and what to do with it. “It’s not how much time you have, it’s what you do with the time you have.”

1. Opening: Establish a setting, set the mood or introduce a character at the start. You want the open to grab attention, Thompson says, but he doesn’t believe in using the best video off the top. “I know it’s a philosophy in some newsrooms,” he admitted. “If you have a crying mother, that’s great video so you start with it. But who is she, why is she crying, what happened to her?” Use that great video later, when you’ve told the viewer more about the character. Thompson does believe in using natural sound off the top, however. “Track is contrived,” he says, “not natural to the environment.”

2. Intrigue: Thompson’s approach in the field is to shoot anything unexpected that happens, capture details and look for themes. When you put your story together, use what follows the opening to “establish that there is still something to learn.” Great advice! So many stories tell you everything you need to know right at the start. Why would anyone keep watching? Notice how Thompson draws the viewer in in this feature:

3. Development: At this point, you want the viewer to get to know the characters so you’ll expand on their concerns, problems, personalities and aspirations. To do this well, Thompson urges photojournalists not to settle for easy B-roll and to avoid head-shot interviews. “Interact with your characters,” Thompson urges photojournalists. “A lot of reporters don’t care about people, hate communicating with people. If they aren’t going to interact with the characters, you must.”

4. Climax:  Anticipate moments in the field, and in the edit, let pivotal moments breathe, Thompson advises. Don’t cover an emotional sound bite. Let it sink in. Above all, don’t leave your viewer with a fuzzy idea of what the story is about. “Clarity is more important than style,” Thompson says. “Emotion is more important than style, even if it’s not totally in focus.”

5. Closing: Always plan a closing shot that will help you wrap things up, Thompson says. Allow your audience to reflect on the story and “wave goodbye.” Don’t draw things out at the end. He compared stories that stumble around at the end to what happens to a conversation after one person has already said goodbye. Awkward, for sure. “You’ve hit the climax, so get it over with,” Thompson says.

Thompson and I were among the judges for the KNPA’s annual awards. I asked him what issues he noticed in the stories we screened.*

The bakery story was just one of several award winners in the annual KNPA contest.  It’s a natural sound piece that was shot by Chad Darnall of WPSD-TV in Paducah.

For more about Thompson, including his prize-winning story reel, read our earlier post on his work.

*I know, I know. Sorry about that light, but the hotel meeting room didn’t give me much to work with.

Diana B. Henriques of the New York Times says the book that most influenced her when she first started reporting had nothing to do with journalism or literature. It was Alan Lakein’s How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, first published 40 years ago. Writing in the IRE Journal, Henriques says she still uses the strategies she learned from that book when she was covering courts in Monmouth County, New Jersey. “Set a big, meaningful goal and identify the steps necessary to reach it; incorporate some of those steps into your to-do list each day,” Henriques advises. “If a step seems to big to handle, break it down into smaller tasks that can be done in spare hours or even spare minutes.”

Time-management is more important than ever for journalists in today’s hyper-busy newsrooms. So is source management, something Henriques says she learned from Barbara Walters’ classic How to Talk with Practically Anybody About Practically Anything. Collecting business cards is only a first step. “The next steps are regular follow-up calls, friendly banter with the phone-answerers, and careful notes about the source’s interests and career,” Henriques says. Staying in touch and building a professional relationship turns a contact into a source.

The Walters book also helped Henriques improve her interviewing, another essential skill for all journalists. They key is to be tough but courteous, she writes. “First and most importantly, because you almost always get better information that way. And second, because the dispassionate, fair-minded impression you deliver when you master the technique is your passport to credibility.”

Both of the books cited are out of print. Used copies are available, but there are plenty of other resources along the same lines. Spend an hour taking a free course on time management for journalists from the Reynolds Center on Business Journalism. Read this piece by Poynter’s Chip Scanlan on time management for writers. Check our posts on interviewing and Eric Nalder’s classic, Loosening Lips: The Art of the Interview.

Keep reading to become a better reporter, and if you have a book or resource to recommend, please share in the comments!

Where are the dominant local TV news stations?  As one-time powerhouse stations struggled in the ratings, we asked a question that touched off the most active conversation on the site to date.

For journalists, almost nothing is just personal. Ethical issues can arise when journalists think their “private” lives really are private.

How to create an interactive timeline. A tutorial on how to use Dipity and Vuvox.

How to make a TV story memorable. Tips on reporting and writing from award-winning KARE reporter Boyd Huppert.

The best local TV stations to work for. Results of a survey of TV news directors judging their peers on the quality of their news.

TV news needs verbs. A heartfelt plea to revive the use of action words in television newscasts.

Why some longtime anchors get the boot. A reflection on the departure of some veteran news anchors.

The glamorous life of TV news. A humorous look at what it’s really like to work in TV news, complete with video.

Quick thinking gives iPhone telephoto lens. Your smartphone can do even more than you might imagine.

Tips on taking good notes. How to use your own shorthand and learn to leave out what’s not important.

One additional observation about what drew readers in 2012: Several older posts beat out new ones in our most-read list, including digital note-taking tools and  how to interview children. Our resource guides to journalism fellowships and grants and recommended journalism textbooks remain popular, as well.

We’ll try to provide more of what you’re looking for in 2013, and we’d be happy to have your support in the form of a donation. Remember, NewsLab has no outside funding whatsoever, so we have to depend on you to keep the site up and running. Thanks, and Happy New Year.

We asked Zurik to share his strategies for finding and keeping track of stories while making the most of his limited time.

Request Records – Often

Most of my investigations are based on documents.  It’s hard for anyone to factually find fault with something that has been put in writing – in a public document.  So I spend at least a part of every week making requests and sorting through records I’ve received.

For me, it accomplishes two things.  First, the more I look at records, the more I am able to tell when something doesn’t look right.  When you see public entities that work well – that have a “clean” set of records – the problem agencies stick out.

Second, many times I will make a records request for some basic documents like salaries for all employees and then get an unsolicited call or letter telling me what I should be looking for.  I guess word spreads when records requests are filed, and when employees hear someone is looking into their entity it is an impetus to call me.

I try to request all of my records electronically.  It usually makes it easier for the agencies – they can send a simple email.  And for me, it’s a helpful way to keep my records organized.

Know the Law

A few co-workers joke with me – “You play an attorney on TV.”  I keep electronic files of relevant court cases and opinions from attorneys general.  I also keep copies of all letters our attorney has written on our behalf.  And I use them all – frequently.

When a public entity that doesn’t necessarily know the law rejects a records request, before I get any attorney involved, I fire off a letter myself – citing specific cases and opinions.  Most of the time, I get access to the records and save our station the money an attorney would cost.

Look at hidden entities

Brett Shipp, a terrific reporter from WFAA, spoke at an IRE Conference two years ago about investigating obscure entities and agencies.  That was possibly the best advice I have received.  I have had the most success as an investigative reporter looking into those entities.  The less sun that’s been shined, the more chance there is for abuse.

Here’s an example that won a national Murrow award:

Let your investigations roll

The more I do this, the more I think the key to most strong investigations is that they don’t disappear after one story.  While there are certainly examples otherwise, most strong investigations I see these days dig deeper than one story or two.  I think that’s the key to significant journalism that leads to action.

It can be a challenge, because less news viewing means many of your viewers haven’t seen some of your past stories.   A fine line exists between rehashing an entire story to update new viewers and telling a new story to loyal viewers.  You don’t want to alienate either.

Maintain a Story Board

One thing that helps me stay organized is keeping a dry erase storyboard.  I produce at least half a dozen stories every sweeps period and sprinkle in a few stories a month (most times more) out of sweeps.  My board has each sweeps month and stories I have planned.  So today, I have stories I am planning to do in November, February, and even May.  Obviously these change, but it gives me a good idea of where I am.  It also shows I consistently have multiple projects going at the same time.  Some are short range and others much longer.  Last May, we started airing a series of reports we called “Dirty Deeds.”  That was a project we worked on for two years.  We also aired a few stories in May on campaign spending.  That research only took a few days.

Watch your peers

I try to spend a few minutes every week looking at other investigative reporters work from around the country.  Twitter makes this easy.  It gives me story ideas and shows me how to tell better stories.  There are many great reporters around the country, but I never miss a story by Bob Segall (WTHR), Tony Kovaleski (KNTV), Stephen Stock (KNTV), Phil Williams (WTVF), Brett Shipp (WFAA), and Byron Harris (WFAA).  All have their own style, but all are tremendous storytellers and investigative reporters.

Join IRE

And finally, if you’re not a member of IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) – join.  That’s how I learned to be an investigative reporter.  Until Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005, I was a sports anchor.  After the storm, my boss asked me to switch over to news.  That has turned into the best decision of my career.  I had some basic knowledge from my days as a student at Syracuse University, but no professional experience as an investigative news reporter.  I basically taught myself with the resources on the website (tipsheets) and IRE journals.