|
|
Some members of the team may be a bit skeptical of the project or dis-trustful of one another and of you, but that's to be expected. Use this time to break the ice with the reporters. If you're lucky, everyone speaks English or you speak the native lan-guage. If not, you'll be talking through an interpreter, which means things will take longer. Plan this extra time lag into your daily sched-ule.
Start by explaining that the project is based on a model that was cre-ated in the Balkans in 1995 to bring journalists together from different ethnic and racial communities to work on concrete reporting projects that highlight common problems and solutions. Explain that they will work together to conceptualize, report, and write a series of stories. Explain that the project will emphasize grass-roots perspectives, con-cerns, and proposals for change from citizens from multiple commu-nities and that it aims to break down stereotypes that all too often per-vade news coverage in all media. Tell them they will do extensive re-porting across ethnic and racial lines, and that this will mean con-ducting interviews in inter-ethnic teams of two or more. Make sure they understand that the stories they produce will be pub-lished in all their participating newspapers. This will provide readers in different communities with a more in-depth view of popular con-cerns across ethnic and racial lines than is typically presented in the press. You may want to pass out copies of the stories from the Macedonia Multi-Ethnic Team Reporting Project to show the journalists what you are talking about. Another option is to bring along copies of a prize-winning series from an American or Western European newspaper that takes an innovative approach to issues such as child abuse, diver-sity, or immigration. Depending on the common language of the project, the coordinator may want to have the sample series translated ahead of time so that everyone can grasp its style and content. At the very least, the report-ers will be able to examine the physical appearance of the series and scrutinize the photos, charts, graphics, logos, and boxes-all of the garnishes that Americans take for granted but that may seem new and exotic in many countries. Showing the reporters concrete examples will open their eyes to the possibilities of this project. It will start them thinking in terms of a unified "package" of stories with a single theme, rather than as a set of isolated reports. As you discuss the project, explain that it mixes journalism theory with hands-on practice. The reporters will spend part of each day discussing abstract journalistic terms and planning story strategies. They will then go into the field to apply what they learn. If you are conducting this project outside the United States, you may want to introduce the journalism style the reporters will spend the next month learning and practicing. Talk about the difference between fact-based and commentary-style reporting (see appendix).
As coordinator, remain objective at all times and remember that you represent a neutral organization. Take care not to display partisan opinions or to associate exclusively with one ethnic group. The project's credibility and success hinge on the coordinator's ability to inspire confidence among journalists of different ethnicities and broadcast the team's objectivity to the larger public. Set a collegial tone from the start-but also lay down parameters for acceptable behavior in the group. Discussion and debate are welcome and indeed, participation by all team members is imperative. How-ever, don't tolerate hostility or grandstanding. The series cannot be used for propaganda purposes, and all participants must agree ahead to time to put their own political differences aside for the duration of the project.
Also underscore that this project is different, that the series will be culminate a month's worth of interviews, research, writing, and edit-ing and that each story will move through several drafts before the fi-nal version is ready. Stress that while this may seem like an inordinate amount of time to reporters who are used to writing two stories a day, it is also a chance for them to stretch and take their time in a way that is not normally afforded to them in their daily jobs. It's up to the coor-dinator to slow the reporters down and make them think about the process as they create and assemble the product. Schedule a set meeting time each day for the team. This allows time for debriefing, answering questions, reinforcing ideas of diversity and team reporting, and planning the next day's appointments. In this way, everyone knows the daily progress of the series and can offer helpful ideas or contacts. Likewise, the meetings can also ensure the coordinator that the series is moving forward on schedule. During these early days, the coordinator will draw up a project timeline that everyone can stick to so that reporters know exactly when stories are due. Try to plan one day trip. When appropriate, perhaps even plan an overnight excursion to interview sources and conduct research in rural areas or provincial towns whose residents will probably offer a differ-ent perspective than those in the capital and provide reporters with in-sights for more thorough, broad-based stories that will interest readers throughout the country. Encourage the reporters to plan and organize the trips, possibly calling on colleagues in far-flung bureaus to help with contacts. This gives the reporters an added level of personal responsibility for the project. It also demonstrates how an ethnically diverse team can gain access to people and places that might be off limits to individual reporters. For in-stance, a reporter of one ethnicity may not be welcome in a community of another ethnicity or may not speak the language needed to commu-nicate. In other common scenarios, the reporter may be able to gain ac-cess to a community but find its residents distrustful and unwilling to talk openly. However, if that reporter is accompanied by a colleague who is of the same ethnicity as the community and shares a common language with its people, the two journalists, working together, can gain the confidence of the community so that they talk honestly and at length to the inter-ethnic team. Everything will probably take a lot longer than you originally antici-pate, and the stories will probably undergo a lot of revision before they are ready for print. Use conservative estimates for how long a story will take to report and write. You can always go back and flesh out a story if you end up with extra time, but chances are that, between lin-ing up sources, reporting, writing, translating, and doing second drafts, things will take longer than planned. Some scheduling questions to consider are:
Many of these deadlines will overlap. However, a rough rule of thumb is to budget about 45% of the time for reporting, 40% for writing and editing, and 15% for wrap-up. The details are up to you. In setting dates, start from the publication date and work backwards. If you don't have a firm publication date yet, pick a hypothetical one. Don't forget to allow enough time for follow-through as the project draws to a close so that you can maximize the impact: as the stories hit publication, your team will hold press conferences and speak at com-munity forums and possibly on radio talk shows to discuss what they have learned.
If not, once you've set the project's parameters and given your intro-duction, spend several days working through the choice of a general theme with the participants and begin helping them select specific story ideas. In either case, the coordinator will want to keep in mind that: 1. All members must be encouraged to bring up ideas and engage in debate so the team reaches a conclusion that is palatable to each mem-ber. 2. Avoid overtly political topics on which opinion is divided and pas-sions run high. It will be difficult to keep the reporters working to-gether on any topic, and tackling a volatile subject on which there is little common ground is a sure way to polarize the team and torpedo the project. 3. Stick with a news-feature format and try to get the reporters to focus on issues or problems that cross ethnic and racial lines and affect eve-ryone.
Start by asking the reporters to throw out some ideas. What topics in-terest them? What bothers or impresses them? How would they de-scribe these topics if they were recounting them to friends around the kitchen table? One tactic to draw out reporters is to go around the room and ask each person to suggest an idea. At this stage, some reporters may be nerv-ous about speaking up in front of new colleagues. They may not want to contradict what someone else is saying. They may not be used to a Socratic dialogue or a discussion in which their opinion is sought out. It's up to the coordinator to encourage each person to speak up and to give them positive feedback as they work through the painful process of proposing, discarding, and selecting story ideas. You may even need to break the ice by throwing out some of your own suggestions. Conversely, the reporters may give you ideas that are too general or narrow. If so, tease individual stories out of these threads. That's a good idea, you might tell a reporter. Now, how would you execute that story? What's the angle? Who would you talk to? How would you balance the story by ethnicity, religion, and gender? Again, the goal is to encourage them to think through the process of journalism before they conduct an interview. This way, they begin to see the possibilities for diversity and the importance of balanced reporting. You may also want to consider innovative ways to enliven a often-told
story. This might mean tracking a product from farm to market instead of
writing a story about annual yields and prices. In the Macedonia Reporting
Project, under the general theme of the economy, the journalists wrote
about agriculture, specifically the economic cycle of tobacco, Macedonia's
cash crop. They visited a Turkish village in Macedonia to interview farmers,
toured a state-run tobacco processing factory, and so on. The coordinator
then assigned the Turkish reporter to put the story together. With feeds
from the other team members at every step, the reporter showed how tobacco
was intertwined with the lives of Macedonians, Turks, and Albanians and
how the collapse of Yugoslavia had eroded the market for Balkan tobacco.
Ultimately, the story traced tobacco to the grimy boys and girls who sold
cigarettes illegally at the Grand Bazaar, showing the last stop in the
cycle of exploitation.
Return to Global Beat Home Page Nuclear Watch | East Asian Security | Economic & Monetary Union | NATO Expansion | Nuclear Weapons and Proliferation | U.S. Defense Policy | Publications | Events | |
