More outsmarting ourselves?

I was talking to an editor friend of mine recently about some writers who work for her. She was complaining about output from her staff--or, to be more accurate, the complete nonexistence of output from her staff. I was walking through the process her writers were using and I was frankly dumbfounded to find that none of them ever took notes. Nope. They recorded all of their interviews and then transcribed the interviews before beginning work on the finished piece.

I think my answer to that would be to pick up the recording device and drop it in a bucket of water and ask the writer where the story is now. But I've been accused of management tactics akin to Bobby Knight so I'd advise not following my example there.

And the more I thought about that problem, the more it occurred to me what the real issue was. The massive wasting of time in transcribing and and then writing is only one part of it. And it's actually the minor piece of the puzzle. The real problem is that little electronic backup in the form of the digital recording means the writer isn't listening during the interview. I've watched such writers work from typed up lists of questions hammering through the interview like a contestant on Iron Chef. They aren't listening to what is being said in those answers and they don't dare deviate from the script to respond to what the interview subject has said. In fact, you can see them ignoring anything that doesn't match what is on the list of questions.

One of my favorite stories about young reporters involves Edna Buchanan, the long-time crime reporter in Miami. She is a wonderful writer and reporter and is known for asking all the right questions and her writing reflects a sharp wit and keen eye. And early in her career she had to write up a story about a local official being found dead in his car from an apparent suicide. It was a straight ahead piece--who, how, where, why, and covered the meaning of the death in terms of what the person did. But her competitor had asked one more question and it turns out the male official was wearing a woman's clothes when the body was found. One question. An open ear and an open mind that let the story tell itself and not have it told before the interview begins. So, while that electronic back up is grinding away, the reporter is grinding through the process of the interview. Process is what makes sausage--not good writing and reporting.

Taking notes is old-fashioned. It's hard work. It requires that you truly capture what the person is saying and listen carefully. It requires that you think on the fly and know what to write down and what to leave out. It means keeping a space in the margin to note the spot on the counter so you can go back and find the spot on the recording you need to double check a direct quote. As a reporter, I was careful but I also rarely went back and listened to the tapes of my interviews. I had my notes. And we did use tapes then and I often found the tape a garble of background noise such as squeaking chairs, coughs in the background, sounds in the newsroom and God knows what else. But my notes were clear. Precise. And I could rip through them in minutes to find what I needed and get my work done. As a reporter I was doing more than 300 bylined stories a year. I didn't have time to transcribe interviews.

But I also think it made me a careful listener. And it made me ask follow up questions if for no reason other than to slow a subject down so I could capture the information. It also allowed me to ask questions in more than one way so I could get the best answer from my interview subject and allow them to restate their ideas to make them clearer or to further flesh them out. And when I pick up publications today all I can see is those unasked questions in the articles I read. And, now, I wonder if it's not dependence on those recordings that have rendered so much of today's journalism brain numb and question poor.