In this episode we talk about how we choose our news coverage and how we write our stories. We describe our personal experiences with publishing stories and how we handle responses from the public. Additionally, we discuss who we are more, and explain why you should listen to our thoughts on journalism. We hope you enjoy listening!

Transcript

Josie Shaw  00:07

Welcome to today’s episode of From Dusk to Dawn, where we shine a light on what we do at The Sunrise News. I’m Josie Shaw, the digital media and marketing specialist for The Sunrise News.

Harrison Neville  00:17

And I’m Harrison Neville, the editor in chief for The Sunrise News. Today, we’re talking about how we choose and write our articles. We hope you enjoy listening.

Josie Shaw  00:27

Well, Harrison I have, I just have a story to tell you. Summertime is just really hard. It’s so hot. And every summer I just have to remind myself that you know, even though the hot is hard, the hot July the humidity in Alabama July. The cold and the chilly winter weather. It’s no snow laughing matter. 

I really struggled to get through that one.

Harrison Neville  00:52

I didn’t think I was going to laugh, I’m gonna be honest.

Josie Shaw 00:55

It worked!

Harrison Neville 00:56

I was waiting. I was like, sure, sure. “I don’t know what you got Josie,” but I didn’t think I was actually gonna laugh.

Josie Shaw  01:00

Well, I think I got a larger laugh than I did last time. So exponential growth there.

Harrison Neville  01:06

Yeah, no, that was pretty good. Well played. Well played. 

Well, Josie, this is our second episode of the podcasts. And you have I have talked off air a little bit about this. But last time when we recorded the podcast, we kind of just jumped in. And we didn’t spend much time talking about us. And you know, who are we to speak on journalism? And why should anyone care about us and what we’re doing? So yeah, why don’t we just talk a little bit of us? Tell me about yourself, Josie. 

Josie Shaw  01:32

So, Josie Shaw, just graduated college. I studied broadcast journalism and production in school and also art, and spent a lot of my time kind of bouncing between those two fields of like media and personal art. But yeah, a lot of my work, I worked in print and podcasts for a long time. Currently working in audio for a little bit, for Sunrise and also another station. 

And yeah, most of my coverage has been about — I focus a lot about justice stories. So you know, human rights justice and environmental justice. But I also just really love, when I was writing in college, and also still writing now I realized how much I love just writing about history and the archival aspect of research and journaling. And, you know, just confining a story into a space that can exist forever. 

That’s my favorite thing about journalism is writing that story in a concise way that people can look back on 10 years later and be like, “Oh, this happened.” But in journalism, sometimes [that’s] the only way to relive those events. So yeah, that’s kind of where I come from with journalism. And yeah, I’m the digital media and marketing specialists here at Sunrise.

Harrison Neville  02:44

Nice. I liked it. That was that was good. It will really fit into actually what we’re going to talk about a little bit later here. Yeah.

Josie Shaw  02:50

Was it a good? Would you hire me? If, I mean, you did hire me. 

Harrison Neville  02:52

Bout to say, yeah already been there done that. Yeah. And I think I’d be impressed by that. If I didn’t already know you. I’d be like, “Oh, that sounded really good.” I’d be impressed. So yeah, good job. Good job.

Josie Shaw  03:03

Appreciate that. Well, tell me a little bit more about yourself.

Harrison Neville  03:06

Sure. So I’m the editor in chief for Sunrise News — The Sunrise News. And I’ve been, I was a college journalist for about four years, started off same place as you with the Alabamian. I’ve kind of done a little bit of everything. I was briefly on the podcast that we had there. I’ve done little bits and pieces of like, I’ve had to put together a print newspaper numerous times. I won’t say I’m the most talented at it. I’ve seen the stuff you’ve done with that. And you’re much better than me, but I know how to do it. 

And yeah, writing…there’s a few different types of stories I love. First of all, one of my favorite parts of [journalism] is just meeting someone new, and talking to them about something that gets them excited. And genuinely one of my favorite words to hear from people when I’m interviewing them is, “this is the first time I’ve been interviewed.” And it always makes me so excited because I’ve interviewed for Sunrise a few artists. And I love it when they say, “This is my first time I’ve been interviewed. I’m so excited.” 

I’m like, “Yes!” I’m so happy to give you this, this chance to tell people about your work because, I think it’s cool. You know? If I’m interviewing them, I think it’s cool. And it’s just a really fun experience to talk to someone who you’re like, there’s no polish here. There’s no like —  they’re not used to talking to the press. They haven’t been practicing it. This is their first time and they’re just genuinely excited and getting to share that excitement with your readers is always fun for me. 

And then also, just like you, I enjoy the research aspect a lot. I do enjoy digging into a story and really diving in and researching and looking for stuff. It’s like  the hunt for information, the hunt for things that other people don’t know and then having the opportunity to tell other people about that. It’s a lot of fun. So yeah, that’s, that’s a little bit about me about who I am as a journalist and what I like doing. Yeah. 

Josie Shaw  05:08

You’re hired.

Harrison Neville  05:09

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Josie Shaw  05:11

And I think that just goes really well into what we’re talking about today. And just we wanted to, to shine a light a little bit on, you know, how we write our articles. And what does the process of picking up an article and researching it and publishing it looks like? 

Harrison Neville  05:20

Right, right. 

Josie Shaw  05:21

So I kind of want to go ahead and jump into this. Where do you normally find your leads when you’re doing an article and picking up a story? Where did those ideas kind of come from?

Harrison Neville  05:35

Sure. Well, ideas for stories come from a few different places for me. So a lot of times, I think, in general, stories start with a question. 

Like, you’re walking around —  That’s what I told people back when I was, you know, with the Alabamian, and I was teaching new staff writers how to find stories…. I’ve actually taken them outside before and made them do this. Drove them crazy. Just walk around campus, walk around a place and see what questions do you have? Like, you see a poster, there’s a flier…there’s event happening. What questions do you have about it? Does that seem interesting? Would people want to know? You don’t know this thing about this building? Let’s just look into it. Find out if there’s something there. 

So that’s one way. A lot of it is just, you’re always looking for answers to questions. And so a lot of it is genuinely just being observant and noticing things. Another way for me with leads is, a lot of times when I’m working on another story, I will find out something. Like I’ll be writing a story, I’ll be like, “Oh, okay.” So I’ll interview someone; this isn’t relevant for this story, but it gives me a good idea for another story. Like I didn’t know this, you just told me some new information. Now I’m going to look into it. And occasionally people reach out and they’re like, “Hey, this is interesting. I think you should look into this.” And I’m like, “Okay, sure, I’ll sure I’ll look into it.”

Josie Shaw  06:51

How do you decide, like, what to look into? And what not to look into? Like? How do you decide when ideas are worth pursuing? And I mean, and even publishing to a degree, but yeah, how do you decide that?

Harrison Neville  07:05

Sure. It depends. So sometimes you can figure it out sooner than others. I’ll put it that way. Sometimes you have an idea, you look at a pitch, and say you have a question. You have a question, you want to answer it, you pick up your phone, you Google it, and immediately the answer is there. You’re like, “Okay, well, not much of a story here after all. it’s public information. Everyone knows, I just didn’t know. And someone else has already explained it to people, right?” So that’s one way. 

Other times people will pitch a story. And you might, whether it takes a quick, you know, it might take a long time for you to figure it out. But you’ll realize that when they pitched the story to you, they had their own sort of biases that let them miss certain details, right? That happens sometimes. Like someone pitches a story. And you’re like, oh, this sounds really interesting. And in your eyes, the way they pitched the story to you, you left out some really pertinent information. And the story is no longer really relevant the way they think it is, or that they lead you to believe it was. So that’s one way you kind of sort out through things. A lot of times though, you just have to start researching and find out….There was an article I was working on at one point. I think I spent about a week researching and pulling together notes and looking into things before I realized, oh, okay, this isn’t going anywhere. There’s not enough information and a lot of the questions I’ve had, I’ve answered, and I’ve answered them. And I’ve answered them. And I found that there’s nothing here to tell, you know? So and that’s just sometimes how it goes. Sometimes journalism is just looking and then you don’t always find anything.

Josie Shaw 08:35

Yeah, well, I want to bounce off of that, because a lot of like newsrooms that I’ve worked in, get a lot of their stories from from press releases. A lot of companies have someone hired and their job is just to contact, not just but part of their job is just to contact different news organizations and get their own stories out there. But I wasn’t used to that when I entered like the workforce as a journalist, and I was trying to figure out how do I turn a press release into an actual like story, especially because those press releases are sent almost as their own story. The ethics are kind of up in the air, especially with AP style about if you can just copy and paste a press release when it comes to plagiarism. But I found it really interesting in my new newsroom, they decided to send press releases my way to write about, but instead of telling me just to regurgitate the information they gave me, they told me to think about, you know, the information they’re giving me and the perspective they’re giving to me. Like obviously, businesses and companies and places sending you stories about themselves are going to spin it in a certain way that looks good for them.

Harrison Neville  09:41

Right? Yeah, of course.

Josie Shaw  09:42

I mean, that’s been really — I want to say almost kind of fun. Just to find almost like a third person view of those stories that are honestly like kind of given to me. How do I how do I handle this and tell this in an engaging way. So yeah, I definitely get that and just find a different perspective of the story. For you once you’ve kind of found those perspectives for story, how do you jump into researching what does that look like for you?

Harrison Neville  10:04

Once again, it’s very situational. But I generally try to do a lot of research. I try to do at least cursory research before I talk to anyone. So general rule of thumb, I don’t want to talk to someone and then [it] be like, they’re like, “Oh, so you know about this?” And I’m like, “Nope, no idea.” 

And it’s like, we could found that with a Google search, right? So I try to at least do cursory research before I talk to any actual people. Let’s see. Okay, I’m gonna give an example. So last time, when I was working on a really big article… I wrote an article about the coroners in Alabama. One of the first articles I wrote for The Sunrise News. While doing that one, I went through, and because coroners are a county by county type situation, I went through and I read the laws for all 67. I think we have 67 counties. I read the laws, like for that county, regarding coroner’s for every single one of them, because no one had just gone through and compiled a list, right? No one had gone through them and like, hey … this is just this is how coroners function in this county. 

Basically, I was just trying to find out, does this county have a coroner? Does it have a medical examiner?… But it was tricky to find out for sure. And some of the corners of medical examiners were different than others, like different levels of responsibilities. It just wasn’t something that anyone else had done a lot of research that I could easily access. So I went through, and I just and also I wanted to be certain because, I won’t say which paper, but one of the papers who had written previously on this, I found some errors in their information. But their article was wrong in a few key ways. And… That was unfortunate. So I wanted to do all my own research and make sure it was correct. So I was reading through all of the county laws, and that was a lot.

Josie Shaw  11:48

Yeah, that is a lot. 

Harrison Neville  11:51

So that’s one way…Sometimes you’re working on stories that have been well researched, and you can reference a lot of other journalists’ work and a lot of other like, you know, people who have written research papers. And sometimes you’re working on stuff where no one else has done the research. So your process is going to be, you know, digging through legal documents, and records and stuff. And you’re going to do that for a while. But I did all of that before I ever talked to anyone because I wanted to make sure I had all my facts straight before I reached out and started talking to people,

Josie Shaw 12:20

I can definitely relate to that. And I kind of want to talk a little bit about the culture of —  I don’t wanna say, I don’t want to get into the process of interviewing, because that’s a whole episode itself. Something about journalism that I really love is the culture of talking to people and interviewing people. Especially because I’d say there’s kind of like two different types of conversations that I’ll have with somebody, when I’m researching for an article. One of those is kind of like a sit down recorded, I’m going to get quotes from this. This is going to be like hard, like research. But there’s kind of like soft interviews often. And I really enjoy that culture of having a few people that I’ve worked with for years that I can kind of trust on and call up and get their — not their thoughts, but get whatever information they have about this topic. I can learn a bit about it and spring off of that, and then come back to them later. And I just really, I appreciate that, especially like, phone calls are kind of a rarity now, so having those people I can just call up and talk to these things with it’s really engaging for me at least it makes it feel a lot more personable because I know whenever I write an article, and I’m not talking to someone face to face or over the phone, I kind of feel like a little left out of the experience. 

Harrison 13:33

Sure. 

Josie 13:37

But…I want to talk a little bit about an article that I wrote with the Alabamian. And it was loosely but also specifically about a lynching that happened here in Montevallo 200 years ago. 18 hundred’s?

Harrison Neville  13:49

Yeah. I don’t want to say for sure, because I don’t quite remember the date.But yes, somewhere in that range.

Josie Shaw  13:54

Well, I wanted to talk about it because of that exact reason. Like it’s something that I really wanted to have extremely factual. Whenever I published this information about this story. I wanted things to be right and correct. And to the degree that we know. And I did a lot of research and I spent a really long time working on that article. And I still made a mistake. Mistakes happen. So that was a really almost humbling experience because I worked so hard on getting things perfect, but then they weren’t perfect. And that’s just how it goes and went back and corrected our mistake. But that was probably the largest research process I had. You know, finding old books and finding random websites on the internet, talking about this and calling up historians and archivist and talking to citizens of Montevallo. And it was really intensive. But it was really rewarding. Once I had that finished product of presenting this information in an accessible and public way where it was not condensed or concise, but you know, kind of put together. It’s really satisfying to see that.

Harrison Neville  15:00

Yeah, and you feel like you’ve, you’ve done this thing, and especially when it’s something where no one else has really taken that time to create that type of resource. You feel like you’ve really given something that people can use in the future. 

Josie Shaw 15:13

Absolutely. 

Harrison Neville 15:14

But I have to ask. When you did that. When you first published it. How nervous were you? When you when you like were posting online? And you were — it was, I guess it’s probably been printed? What were your nerves like?

Josie Shaw 15:25

No, my nerves were pretty bad. It was front page of the paper. Yeah, my nerves are bad. Not because I was worried about the reception. But yeah, I was just really heavily anticipating it being this perfect thing, right? Because we spent so long working on it. I was like, if it’s not perfect, then something’s wrong. And I’ll be upset. And I was upset. But I mean, you get over it. But no, yeah, I definitely was nervous. Have you had any experiences like that?

Harrison Neville  15:54

So many. Every time after any article that I’ve spent a decent amount of time on? I have a little bit like a moment…where I’lll sit there, finger hovering over the mouse, where I’m like, “Okay, this is it. I’m going to publish this. And I can’t take another 30 minutes, again, to go back over it looking for anything wrong with it. This is it.” And then, you know, when you do and you send it and you’re like, “phew?” And then usually…after I send an article, I pretty much always go and relax. I don’t immediately go back to work, I go do something. Because ya know… there’s something, a little nerve wracking, especially when you’ve talked to a lot of people, and you’ve interviewed so many people, and you’re like, I want to represent these people. Right? Like, I want to do a good job. Like I know, for artist features, that’s always a big thing. For me, I’m like, I’ve spent so much time talking to you. I’m trying to display your work and display who you are. I want to do a good job representing who you are. And so it’s like, this is my take on who you are and its stressful… Especially because later on you’re gonna —  you should email that artist and be like, “Hey, the article [has] been published.” Yeah. It’s like, you know, you’re always wondering, are they gonna send back “I hated it?”

Josie Shaw  17:05

Well, how do, you know, how do you know when an article is done? I mean, it’s kind of I don’t wanna say rhetorical question. It’s kind of a silly question. Because if we could keep writing forever about the same article, we probably would, but — 

Harrison Neville 17:19

Right, yeah. 

Josie Shaw 17:20

How do you get to that stopping place?

Harrison Neville  17:21

Okay. You have a question. Every article, like I said earlier, every article starts with a question. Where you get the question, who it comes from? All that can vary, but every article starts with a question you’re trying to answer. 

So I guess, when you’ve answered the question, and sometimes you might be like, but I could keep answering the question, and that’s true. But so one, when you’ve answered the question, and two, when you’ve answered the question well enough, because you can always write another article, you can always write a follow up, you can always keep going. But you’ve answered one question. That question might have led to more questions, and you shouldn’t leave a whole bunch of loose ends. But there might be more details you need to follow up on. And that’s fine. So the article is done when you’ve answered your question. And when you’re sure that the article is representing all the arguments, everything you need to do in the best…I don’t want to say best possible light, because that sounds — I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is, when you’re presenting all the arguments, the best way that they can and should be presented. Yeah. 

Your article might come out with someone looking really, really bad. But as long as you know, that you wrote, and you gave them the best opportunities, … and that you didn’t take any of their words out of context. So the best possible arguments that they could make for whatever case they’re making that those were made. So I realized I just sort of veered off into another little bit. I’m so sorry. 

Josie Shaw 18:56

That’s okay. 

Harrison Neville 18:57

But yeah, that’s when you know an article is right. When you are sure that you’re publishing it for the right reasons, as in, you’re not, you’re like, “Okay, this isn’t a personal I’m not publishing it for a vendetta. Yes, I’m publishing it, because I think it needs to be written.” So that’s —  okay. Start over. Let’s go through a checklist. Here’s the things that you should have before an article is published. Bear with me, audience. 

One, have I answered the question? Two, is this something that community should know. Three, am I aware of any personal bias that I have regarding the subject and have I taken that into account as I’ve reviewed and written and gone back over it? Four, has someone done copy on this? Has someone that I know will do a good job and give honest feedback…done copy? Five, is my deadline up? That’s a very real thing. Like we can’t keep writing articles forever. We have to get them published and move on to the next article, even if the next article is gonna be more about the same topic. So I feel comfortable with that checklist. That’s my checklist for how you know an article is done.

Josie Shaw 19:57

That’s a pretty good checklist. might steal that, because I need that. I’m trying to think of certain examples, but they’re not really coming up. But I can think of articles I’ve read or written where sometimes the answer to your question is more questions. And that’s the answer. Like — 

Harrison 20:16

Yeah.

Josie Shaw 20:17

— and that’s okay. But like, it just depends on how it’s all framed. But writing an article really does feel like painting a picture. And it’s really easy to get zoomed in on making sure that like, the tone of every color, and the painting is matching each other. And they’re, you know, complementing each other fairly. But at some point, yeah, you do just kind of have to be like, “Oh, its my deadline.”

Harrison Neville  20:43

It’s, it’s time, or who’s gotta be published? Yeah.

Josie Shaw  20:47

But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s never — I’ve never released an article that I don’t think is ready to be released. And if I have, then, you know, we made up for it and fix that. But no, I think I think that’s well put. And to wrap it all up, how do things change once you publish an article? Do you ever see a change or feel a change? Besides the 30 minutes of panic?

Harrison Neville  21:08

I guess it depends. Sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes that’s part of what you as a journalist, part of your job is paying attention to what happens with the article. So after you publish something, is there some type of response? It doesn’t have to be like an actual like, someone writes, like, “Hey, I did or didn’t like this article.” I mean, like, is there a response from the community or from important figures in the community? …Say, for example, this is just an easy example, say you point out an important issue in the community? Like there’s an issue with the plumbing in a certain community or something, right? So you point that out. Okay, what happens afterwards? Is their response? Like people start going to their city council and talking about it more? Okay, if so, you want to go in on that. You want to go cover that article. You want to watch for that. So yeah, that’s part of the lifetime of the article is being aware of what happens after the article is written. 

And so now I’ll touch on, because I think it’s important, something I’m kinda stealing from a journalism conference I went to. Someone talked about…after an article is done, you should hold your head up high if you cannot. So if you write an article, because as journalists, sometimes you write an article people won’t like what you write, right? If you write an article, and you can’t, the next day, keep your head up and look people who might be upset with you in the eye — not saying you have to like stand there and let them yell abuse at you or something like that — but if you can’t stand there, shoulders back head up, and just walk around your home, your city, wherever and not feel ashamed or embarrassed then you shouldn’t write that article. Right? So, so yeah, and sometimes it might be that the article definitely is good, but you still feel nervous about it. That’s fine. You can be nervous, but…part of being a journalist is taking ownership over the words you write. A good journalist doesn’t hide from the consequences of their actions. Because sometimes, thing about being a journalist, sometimes there’ll be consequences. There might even be negative consequences from something you did, whether or not it’s your fault. And part of being a journalist is you take responsibility, not necessarily for what happens after your article, but you do take ownership and responsibility of the article itself. 

Josie Shaw 23:10

And I think that’s a great note to end on. 

Harrison Neville 23:12

Yeah, you know, speaking of wrapping up with deadlines, right?

Josie Shaw 23:14

All right. Thank you for talking with me today. Harrison. I think we shed a good light on on what we do and I’m excited to you know, tell more about that in the future. 

Harrison Neville  23:22

Yeah, same. Thank you, Josie.

Josie Shaw  23:26

We hope you enjoyed today’s episode.

Harrison Neville  23:28

If you’d like to get local Alabama news, check out our website and join our weekly newsletter.

Josie Shaw  23:33

Follow us on social media to keep up with updates about the podcast.

Harrison Neville  23:37

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you soon.