APRIL/MAY 2005 1

Turning numbersinto stories

Just the phrase “computer-assisted re-porting” sounds daunting. We’re word people! We don’t understand math! We barely know how to check our e-mail! If we’d been good at math, we’d all be doctors, not

journalists! We panic, we blather, we hide behind our dictionaries.

But Ron Nixon knows that computer-assisted reporting is just another way to gather informa-tion. It’s reporting, just as interviewing sources or checking documents or do-ing a Uniquery on someone is reporting. Hey, doing a Uniquery…that involves a computer…that makes it computer-assisted report-ing. Hmmmm…

Ron is the CAR editor at the Star Tribune. And unlike the stereotypical (and pos-

You don’t

want to

blend in.

You want to

stand out.Kelley Benham,St. Petersburg Times (paraphrased)

ABOVE THE FOLD is a monthly newsletter produced for the employees of the Star Tribune. Unless otherwise indicated, its contents are the work of Laurie Hertzel, enterprise editor and writing coach.Copy editing is by wordsmiths Paul Walsh and Nancy Lo. Design is by the stylish Tippi Thole.

ABOVE THE FOLDAN OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER ON WRITING AND EDITINGStar Tribune

Minneapolis, Minn.April/May 2005

Vol. 5, No. 2

IN THIS ISSUE

2 Kelley Benham knows how to take a mediocre assignment and spin it into gold.

3 Sensible tips on getting the most from your interviews, and David Finkel’s favorite ledes.

3 Minnesota murders make for great late-night reading.

sibly non-existent) CAR editor, Ron loves words. He loves stories. He loves narrative. He shares his tips on how to get past the numbers to tell great stories. Turn to page 4. ✒

In her December presentation, she shared some of her secrets for making great big old batches of lemonade.

First, it all starts with attitude. If you think something is beneath you, then you’re already defeated.

Initially, Benham wanted nothing to do with this assignment: Go cover a house fire where no one seemed to be hurt, the house didn’t burn down and the flame was already out.

Boring.But Benham chatted up the fire-

fighters and learned that they had had trouble even getting into the house because it was strewn with garbage, old furniture and tons of other junk — including the kitchen sink.

What she turned in was lovely narra-tive about the way the homeowner’s life had so com-pletely unraveled that her house was uninhabitable even before the fire.

It was writ-ten on deadline. It wasn’t a big-budget, I-need-two-weeks-to-do-it narrative.

Nonetheless, it was narrative. A small opportunity for her to hone her skills, in preparation for the time that her editors did give her the time to do a blow out. And Benham did a lot of little ones before she did the huge take-outs.

In order to do them, however, she had to see them. She had to look at the moth and think, okay, I’m going to turn this into a Monarch.

‘RWhile she was a reporter in one of

the Times’ tiny bureaus, Benhammastered the art of taking assign-ments that other reporters consid-ered beneath them and turning those otherwise mundane assignments into wonderful stories. Stories that got the attention of readers — as well as senior editors at the paper.

It’s a strategy that seemed to have worked. Within two years, Benham was promoted to the features desk and won an Ernie Pyle award.

Short narratives

2 ABOVE THE FOLD

“Rooster Attacks, House Fires, and Ice Cream Trucks: Finding Narrative on the Beat.” That was the come-

on for the Harvard-Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism presentation of St. Petersburg Times

feature writer Kelley Benham. But an alternate title might well have been: “Lemonade from Lemons,

Butterflies from Moths, Chicken Salad from Chicken ...”

Kelley Benham

REPORT FROM THE FRONT | KELLEY BENHAM

EDITOR’S NOTE

The Harvard-Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, Part Two

Last issue, we brought you reports from the front from reporters on the scene at last December’s narrative writing conference in Cambridge, Mass. This is the second half of the special report. This year’s conference will be Dec. 2–4. For more information, go to www.nieman.harvard.edu/.

Finding those stories is about obser-vation.

Benham also talked about using the eyes of your beat sources to find opportu-nities for gems. Benham told the cops to let her know when they came across any-thing quirky.

One day they called to say a rooster had attacked a little girl. Thus came Ben-ham’s now famous piece about Rocka-doodle Two, the rampaging rooster.

The story never made it out of her sub-urban extra. But it got the notice of editors and signaled to them that she had an eye. And a way with words.

“If you don’t like your editor, that’s okay, because every time you have a by-line you’re having a talk with his boss,” Benham said.

And that can present better opportu-nities. (Provided you work at a paper that values and rewards narrative.) The key to getting those chances is not to blend in, Benham said.

Make your work stand out. And when another reporter gets a

plum assignment or a promotion you thought you deserved because of all your hard narrative work, “don’t be jealous,” Benham said, “be curious.” Go back and study their work. How did they make this story or that story successful? There are lessons there if you have the courage and humility to look.

In other words, work with the lemons on your beat. The rewards can be sweet.

Rosalind Bentley, Star Tribune special correspon-dent, is a former Star Tribune staff writer and is now a staff writer for the Atlanta Journal-Con-stitution.

APRIL/MAY 2005 3

WBut I went in with an open mind. The ses-

sion was led by Roberta Baskin, an award-winning journalist who has been a producer for “20/20” and “48 Hours.” While some of her tips might seem elementary, I found that it didn’t hurt to go back to the basics and re-examine how I do my job. And a disclaimer: I would never profess to be a reporter who would try to tell an-other reporter how they could do their job better. That said, here are some things I learned that were helpful:

It seems obvious, but there is no such thing as a dumb question. And always ask “why?’’

Ask open-ended questions, not questions that will mostly be answered with “yes’’ or ‘‘no.’’

Try to expose a little bit of your hu-man side to the person you’re interviewing. Let them know you’re not just trying to nail a story (although that’s usually the case).

Really listen to the person you’re talking to.

Silence during an interview isn’t nec-essarily a bad thing. Often times, the other person will fill the uncomfortable void with something unexpected.

Finally, always ask the person at the end of the interview whether there is any-thing else they’d like to say. You can’t possi-bly know everything that’s on their mind.

Another session I found interesting was led by Washington Post reporter David Finkel, who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for

explanatory reporting and feature writing. It was titled, “Telling Hard News Stories at the ‘Felt-Life’ level,’’ a title that, he joked,

didn’t really make any sense. He talked about his re-porting experiences in Kosovo and Iraq. And then he hand-ed out a sheet with ledes from various newspapers that moved him. Here are several of them:

During three years in South Asia, I shook hands with several men who

subsequently exploded. One July morning last year in Oklaho-

ma City, in a public-housing project named Sooner Haven, twenty-two-year-old Kim Henderson pulled a pair of low-rider jeans over a high-rising gold lame thong and de-clared herself ready for church.

Once upon a time, there was a wom-an who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

The corpse measured 66 inches from blue toes to jutting ears.

One year had gone by since the mur-ders, and then another, and now the inves-tigators were deep into a third. They were working day and night, working weekends, putting off vacations, losing weight, grow-ing pale and pasty and haggard, waking at 3 a.m. with a jolt and scratching notes on pads beside their beds. Their sergeant did not know if they would ever find the an-swer. As far as he was concerned, the case was not even in their hands. ✒

David Chanen, Star Tribune staff writer

Ledes, interviewsWhen I attended a session on how to get people to open up with your

interviewing techniques, my first thought was, “What am I really going

to learn from this?’’ Geez, I sat next Joe Rigert for several years. If you

can’t learn from him…

REPORT FROM THE FRONT | ROBERTA BASKIN AND DAVID FINKEL

“Greed, Rage, and Love Gone Wrong: Murder in Minnesota” by Bruce Ruben-stein. University of Minnesota Press. $22.95.

I’ve lived in Minnesota for most of my life, and I thought I knew all the good murders. But it turns out

I’d forgotten a few, and there are oth-ers I’d never heard of. The O’Kasick brothers, for example, were before my time, but their 1957 robbery-and-killing spree was as wild, irrational and deadly as anything you’d see in a Coens brothers movie. Their string of robberies in north Minneapolis ended in a deadly chase in a swampy area near Forest Lake.

And then there was Anna Vander-ford—what a piece of work she was. Convicted at age 22 of killing her 20-year-old boyfriend, she used her strik-ing appearance and sexuality to fight the charges, and then to fight her attor-ney after he lost her case.

There were plenty of others—the murder of Barbara Lund, ex-wife of the grocery store king; the murder of Duluth heiress Elisabeth Congdon; the mur-der of Robert Nachtscheim, a florist in-volved in Twin Cities flower-shop wars. (Which sounds like an oxymoron.)

Bruce Rubsenstein, who writes for City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine, and other publications, has pulled together 10 of the state’s more notorious crimes. Even the crimes that have been written about endlessly, like the Congdon murders, are fresh here. You’ll learn something.

Rubenstein writes with an attitude, and some of the piec-es read as though they he just dashed them off—attributes that are both an-noying and refreshing. But even at their sloppiest, these are fascinating. You’ll be entertained. ✒

Laurie Hertzel, Star Tribune staff writer

RECOMMENDED READING

David FinkelRoberta Baskin

Rubenstein writes

4 ABOVE THE FOLD

By Ron NixonStar Tribune CAR editor

‘I’m a words person, not a numbers person.”

“Narratives are great, but the focus is on telling stories and

the reporting is often shallow.” Despite being two of the most signifi-

cant developments in journalism over the past century, computer-assisted reporting and narrative journalism are often at odds. But despite their differences, the two can be combined to create stories with great depth that are also a pleasure to read.

But you need to keep a few things in mind. First, numbers — no matter how thor-ough your analysis — aren’t the story. Sec-ond, numbers don’t have to get in the way of the narrative if you use them right. Words make the story; the numbers or analysis can give that story extra depth and authority.

Here are a few tips for writing narrative stories that use computer-assisted reporting.

Use the analysis to help form a chronology.Most data analysis is about following

patterns over time and can easily be written into a narrative structure. For a series that I worked on at my former paper, we used the database to follow a sequence of events and there wrote about it in chronological order. There were no numbers in the passage, and it was almost as if the story didn’t involve data analysis. We were the only ones who knew.

When you do use numbers, use them sparingly.Try to hold them to no more than three

in a paragraph. All the other information can go into charts and graphs.

Substitute words for numbers.Instead of using 50 percent, use “half.”

Use “a quarter” instead of 25 percent. If you are writing about increases, say the numbers “more than doubled” or “dropped by a third.” In this way, you still get to use the results of your analysis without clog-ging your stories with numbers.

Don’t dismiss computer-assisted report-ing as being just about abstract numbers.

As the main character on one of my favorite TV shows says, “Everything is about numbers.” Or, maybe it would be more accurate to say, “Numbers are about everything.” Keep in mind that the num-bers collected in databases, spreadsheets and other formats are about people. The census collects information on people. Campaign contributions are people giving money to other people. Administrative databases kept by government agencies are data about how people within a bu-reaucracy work and how that bureaucracy affects people. Furthermore, much of the information we write about comes from studies, reports, etc. Don’t be afraid to use numbers, and remember that they’re all based on real people in the real world.

Understand basic math and statistics.This is the scary one for reporters. But

it’s important. In order to write about numbers or use them accurately and gracefully in stories, you need to have a pretty decent understanding of math and statistics. This will help you turn complex reports and data into prose. Don’t panic. There’s training. There are classes. There are secret math-lovers in this very room who can help you.

Use examples.It’s often hard for people to understand

something like “one part per billion” or how heavy 23 tons is. Comparisons can help them conceptualize — “about the size of three football fields” or “taller than 10 Buicks stacked atop one another.”

Turning data into prose

Resources Any book by John McPhee: No one is better at turning scientific data into prose. Control of Nature, his book on attempts by the Army Corps of Engineers to con-trol the Mississippi River, is especially good at using numbers in a narrative form.

The Chicago Guide to Writing About Numbers, Jane E. Miller: A guide to under-standing numbers and turning them into readable text.

Precision Journalism, Phillip Meyers: This is the book that’s the foundation of computer assisted reporting and a guide to understanding numbers and using them in journalism.