Veterans Talk about How to Find Drama on Schools Beat

Veterans Talk about How to Find Drama on Schools Beat

by Liz Willen

Schools are what Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Professor and New York Times columnist Sam Freedman calls the "switchboard" of society — where everything happening in a community, a town, a nation gets plugged into classrooms, the hallways, the cafeteria and the teachers' lunchroom. Schools, he says, are like stage sets where human dramas, small and large, play out every day.

While covering school boards, test scores and school budgets—all of which is important—it's easy to lose sight of powerful narrative stories that can be told from classrooms. Freedman and Los Angeles Times reporter Erika Hayasaki, who writes about youth and families, shared their tips for telling those stories with journalists who attended the Hechinger Institute's annual Harold W. McGraw Jr. Seminar for reporters new to the K- 12 beat. Another panel at the July 21-23 seminar in New York City featured prize-winning teams of reporters from the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Doug Oplinger and Dennis Willard of the Beacon Journal, who have worked together on major education projects for 10 years, discussed their investigations of charter schools, the Cleveland voucher program, home schooling and school finance. Milwaukee's Alan Borsuk and Sarah Carr discussed two major series they've done in the past year that involved visiting more than 100 schools receiving public funds through the Milwaukee voucher program and, later, every high school in the 130,000-student district.

Borsuk emphasized the importance of keeping personal views about such controversial subjects as school choice out of news stories. He called it "Journalism 101" but said that just reporting what you see will have the greatest impact. Indeed, the Journal Sentinel coverage of vouchers has shaped state policy because it has pulled together a detailed portrait of related events. Carr spoke about how to make the most of school visits and discussed the ethical dilemmas of reporting everything you see—including scenes of violence and errors made by teachers—when the relevance to the story is not clear.

Oplinger urged the seminar attendees to verify everything they're told by digging into records— on political contributions, tax receipts, school and state budgets, and the like. Told that the Cleveland voucher program was meant to serve poor children, Oplinger and Willard then determined that it is actually serving more and more affluent children. They also learned that the Cleveland Catholic diocese has pulled in an increasing amount of voucher money but is serving fewer children today than it did when the program began.

"What I have found is that stories about people and children are the most meaningful," said Hayasaki, who urged the crowd of new reporters to spend time in school cafeterias, parks and after-school programs as well as inside children's homes. "Kids have a world full of drama. See their world. It will get you the details you need to bring your stories to life." Some of her tips:

Routinely ask for students' cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses and MySpace page information. It will help you in future reporting and checking back. Establish a MySpace account yourself, identifying yourself properly and tailoring it for your current project.

Don't just interview kids - interview their parents, who have real insight into their children's souls. Visit their homes and, especially, their bedrooms, if they are comfortable with it, to better see their world.

Take kids to lunch. Buy them a burger and have a face-to-face talk. Observe how they interact.

Don't try to relate to the kids you interview. You are not cool to them no matter what, so don't try to be. Freedman's tips included:

Conduct numerous interviews, far more than what you need for the story. Much of what you gather won't show up in the stories but it will allow you to write with "a quiet, understated voice of authority."

A restrained tone is most effective in storytelling. Don't try to compete with the story by trying to be sadder or funnier or more dramatic than the material.

Don't look at policy and politics as "the dull stuff." How it telescopes down to schools and human beings can be fascinating.

Identify main characters and find out their personal stories. Writing about a young man killed in Iraq, he sought out the soldier's teachers to tell their story.

"The education beat has kept me endlessly interested for more than 30 years," said Freedman. "Don't lose sight of the magic that can happen inside a classroom."