For reporters managing beats with lots of ground to cover, staying on top of the news means deciding where to be, who to talk to and what can wait.
At an SPJ conference panel, “How To Not Get Beat Up By Your Beat,” on Oct. 2, Grace Tucker of the Cincinnati Enquirer, Stephanie Warsmith of the Akron Beacon Journal and Bob Vitale of the Columbus Dispatch shared how they manage demanding beats without letting the work overwhelm them.
For Tucker, an education reporter, the first step was accepting that she could not cover everything. Schools on her beat include Cincinnati public schools, the University of Cincinnati, Xavier University, Miami University of Ohio, Northern Kentucky University, among other districts and institutions.
“It really is just humanly impossible to cover all those districts,” Tucker said.
Instead, Tucker said she learned to “carve out” her own beat within education, focusing primarily on K-12 schools. “I was drawn to the K-12 side,” she said, feeling that a large local readership connected to local schools. While this leaves her little time to cover higher education, she said she relies on colleagues whose coverage overlaps with hers.
Tucker also created “office hours” at public libraries around Cincinnati, where readers could meet with her in person. She said the conversations have helped her develop sources.
“A lot of retirees who come in holding the physical print paper saying that they read about it and it honestly, like, makes my whole day,” Tucker said. “I’ve gotten a lot of sources that way.”
Stephanie Warsmith, an investigative and enterprise reporter at the Akron Beacon Journal, said creating opportunities to build relationships with sources can lead to stories beyond the immediate assignment.
While covering courts, Warsmith often spent time in the courthouse cafe. Attorneys, judges, victim advocates and others would stop to talk, sometimes providing story ideas. Those conversations then helped her spot tips that eventually became enterprise stories. She also follows up on stories she’s published.
“Don’t just do a story and forget about it,” Warsmith said. “There might be six months down the road where somebody calls you about it and you’re like, ‘Oh, you know, that’s another facet of the story that we can explore.”’
Bob Vitale, a dining reporter at The Columbus Dispatch, similarly relies on casual conversations with sources. He recommends continuing the conversation after an interview is done. “Sometimes the most interesting stuff comes after you close your notebook or turn off the recorder,” Vitale said.
One post-interview conversation with a chef led Vitale to investigate whether restaurants were actually difficult to get into after the chef challenged the idea that customers could never find reservations. What began as a casual observation became a story about changing reservation practices and how they affected restaurants.
The reporters also discussed how to keep the beat from taking over their lives.
Vitale said reporters have to recognize that newsrooms are smaller and individual journalists are often responsible for work that used to be divided among several people.
“I just kind of remind myself that I’m not, like, cranking out five or six stories a week,” he said. “We get what we get to.”
Warsmith recommended keeping a list of stories that excite you and making time to work on them, even while handling daily assignments.
“If you always have in mind a story that you really want to do…carve out some time to work on whatever that story is,” she said. “I think that helps our sanity.”
Tucker also makes time to step away from work when she knows she has a long evening ahead. A school board meeting can last several hours, she said, so taking a break during the day helps her return ready to work.
The reporters agreed that staying connected to sources is essential to staying on top of a beat. For moderator Patricia Gallagher Newberry, an enterprise reporter for the Inquirer, the common thread to managing a busy beat was straightforward: “As always, it’s source development.”
Featured photo by Javon Huynh