Tricks of the trade

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The New Yorker legend's essay on interviewing is behind a paywall, but Jack Limpert quotes him on the power of notebooks: "As you scribble away, the interviewee is, of course, watching you. Now, unaccountably, you slow down, and even stop writing, while the interviewee goes on talking. The interviewee becomes nervous … and spills out the secrets of a secret life, or maybe just a clearer and more quotable version of what was said before."

From the Association of Health Care Journalists conference in Denver, Lisa Krieger reports on a panel featuring editors from the New York Times, Family Circle, Men's Health, and AARP Media. The four offered tips to freelancers on how to pitch stories to them, such as this from Betsy Agnvall, AARP Media features editor: "Beware of getting on the 'bad' list. Word spreads quickly when a writer is rude or snarky. Even if the editor drives you crazy, it is not worth it."

It's not new at all, Poynter's Roy Peter Clark writes in reaction to some recent calls for more accessible writing. Rather, Clark traces the topic back at least to his days as a "young pup" at the St. Petersburg Times: "I welcome the kind of reforms that may have sparked a new interest in explanatory forms. I just want to remind the newcomers that you don't have to start from scratch. There is a foundation already laid upon which you can build. Now raise the roof."

Joel Andren's public relations firm PressFriendly has been in business for just a month, but he already has developed some firm ideas about how to (and how not to) get reporters to pick up your pitch. He offers tips like this: "Email is the best way to get ahold of a reporter (with certain exceptions). It works, but it doesn't work immediately. Always leave enough time before your announcement to email the reporter and have one follow-up. One follow-up should suffice."

If your idea of data journalism is limited to spreadsheets, let Robert Aboukhalil introduce you to the wonders of the command line. Aboukhalil has step-by-step instructions, with screenshots, for downloading and analyzing a simple data set: "Anything you can do using your operating system's graphical interface can be done on the command line. Why bother then? It's often easier or faster to perform certain tasks on the Terminal than by clicking around with a mouse."

Things that make the news are often signals of a much larger problem, Pulitzer-winner Sally Kestin told a Poynter event featuring winners of four 2013 Pulitzer Prizes. Following up on the news with data and document research plus old-fashioned shoe-leather street reporting, the reporters hit pay dirt: "Other than that Pulitzer, the work of the seven people present Tuesday night didn't have much in common. But, for most, the processes they used to produce their work did."

Following up on an earlier post, Bill O’Sullivan offers five tips for editors on how to work with writers. (The previous post advised writers on working with editors.) His number one tip? Don't be shy about changing a writer's copy without asking permission: "If you know how to fix the problem, just fix it. Think a sentence would be better without half the words? Cut them. If the writer doesn't like what you've done, he or she will say so."

A new e-book from the European Journalism Centre and Poynter's Craig Silverman uses case studies and expert debunkers to show how to tell news from hoax in the Twitter age. Silverman writes: "With so much misinformation flowing fast and freely, and the ability for anyone to easily shoot, share and/or manipulate images and video, the skills of verification have never been more important. Yet it's not taught on an ongoing basis in most newsrooms."

Readers prefer to share stories that are positive and exciting, Maria Konnikova writes of a Penn marketing study: "When the researchers manipulated the framing of a story to be either negative (a person is injured) or positive (an injured person is 'trying to be better again'), they found that the positive framing made a piece far more popular." Also, fighting click-bait with software, and viral titles for famous books.

The high-brow host from the golden age of TV talk shows speaks to Joe Berkowitz about the advice he got from his idol and one-time boss Jack Paar, and shares some do-and-don't pointers from his long career: "The fewer questions, the better," Cavett says. "Otherwise, you're David Frost and his clipboard, and 'What's your definition of love?' for God's sake." Also: Harnessing the power of silence, and how to handle a hostile William F. Buckley or a drunken Norman Mailer.