Turning Journalistic Scribbles into Professional Notes

It’s said a reporter’s story is only as good as her notes.

Taking good notes seems like an easy task. You go to interviews, ask important questions, take good notes, and write a good story. It’s a piece of cake, right?

The problem is that taking good notes while you’re listening, observing, thinking about your next inquiry or a necessary follow-up question, and attempting to comprehend what the source is saying is not that easy to do.

To make matters worse, you may be doing all of this while you’re standing in shoes that hurt on the side of a busy interstate, questioning a firefighter who is anxious to return to fighting the grass fire you’re interviewing him about. Did I mention you haven’t eaten lunch and you’re starving?

Trust me, I speak from experience, interview conditions are not always ideal. I interviewed Oklahoma’s 25th governor while walking him to the bathroom.

You’ll return to the newsroom with a notebook full of scribbles if you’re not careful.

Good interviewing takes practice, and good note taking is a skill you must hone right from the start. To turn your journalistic scribbles into professional notes, consider:

Start with questions

Start each interview with a numbered list of questions that you must be sure to ask. Write the question number next to the appropriate response. This helps you keep the source’s words in context. Just remember not to be married to the list. Always ask follow-up questions as the interview develops.

Identify sources

Always get the source’s correctly spelled name, official title and a variety of contact numbers. Don’t trust business cards unless the source refers to directly to the card. I’ve been in the same position for 10 years. I’ve had three or four different titles on my business cards. My title actually changed only once. If the source refers you to his or her business card, verify that it’s correct, then staple it in your notebook.

Leave space

Don’t crowd your notebook. Leave plenty of space to add to thoughts or elaborate on points.

Drop digital

I hate digital recorders because they encourage lazy note taking. Never allow a digital recorder of any kind to keep you from taking good notes. As soon as you do, it will fail you. I learned this the hard way when I had to reinterview an attorney about his client’s controversial case because my audio recorder went dead during the interview. He was unhappy about being interviewed a second time and his canned quotes weren’t nearly as telling as his original responses.

Write everything

Reporters always have more information than what ends up in a story. Write down everything. It’s acceptable to have way more information then you’ll ever use in a story. It’s unacceptable to need information that you’re pretty sure a source provided but you didn’t document.

Carry supplies

Journalists always should have at least two pens and paper with them. Always. Murphy’s Law tells you the first pen will run out of ink right in the middle of the interview or your notebook will run out of paper at the most important point in the meeting. It’s a blow to your journalistic professionalism to have to beg supplies from a source.

Keep time

Jot down the time every five minutes or so. This helps you remember the rhythm of the interview. It’s especially helpful for keeping yourself respectful of your source’s time and for pacing feature stories.

Draw charts

I find charts especially helpful in interviews with multiple sources. For example, any time I was covering a city government or school board meeting for the first time, I would draw the board members’ seating chart, label it with numbers and then write the correct name spelling of each board member. During the meeting, this allows you to use the speaker’s number when quoting him instead of repeatedly writing his name. It’s much faster to write and circle the number three than it is to write “Schiermeyer said” repeatedly.

Observe the space

You can learn a lot about people by observing the things with which they surround themselves. It’s helpful to jot down a few details about someone’s home, office or even his personal appearance to help add detail to the story.

In second semester as a college professor my feature writing students were writing profiles about professors. A student chose to profile a philosophy professor who also is the minister of a local church. We were discussing her story in class and what she learned when visiting his office. She talked about stacks of books and piles of papers—typical stuff for a college professor’s office. She also described artwork obviously created by his children that was displayed. Then she admitted there was an item in his office that made her really curious but about which she was afraid to inquire. The professor had a painting of a full-frontal nude woman in his office. Given the location and his position of authority in the church, the painting surprised the student. I suspect it also embarrassed her because she was too afraid to ask him about it. I made her go back to interview the professor just about the painting. You know what’s worse than asking a professor about the nude painting in his office during a series of other questions? Asking a professor about the nude painting in his office as the main subject of the interview. The student discovered that the professor’s wife, an artist, had given him the painting. She also learned an important lesson about observation and follow-up questions. Always ask.

Use your senses

One of my favorite leads I’ve ever read was written by my reporting partner when she was assigned to cover the fair for the state newspaper where we worked. It read:

Six, eight, four, seven.

Moo, moo.

Multiplied by…

Moo.

Time to feed the cattle.

As Michelle Seidl punches out math problems on a calculator, she says she doesn’t have a hard time focusing on her homework in the midst of bulls and heifers waiting for their daily feeding time.

In Livestock Barn No. 3 at the State Fair of Oklahoma, it looks almost like a classroom study session around 5 or 6 p.m. each day – except the smell of cows and wood chips doesn’t usually pervade classroom study halls.