Virtual Expert: Chris Clayton

Chris Clayton was awarded first place in the Human Interest category in the 2007 AAEA Writing Awards Program. His article also won Story of the Year.

On the series that won the awards for AAEA this year, I was unsure just what I might be up against. The one-year anniversary of Katrina hitting ground in New Orleans was going to be a big press deal. However, I didn't think I would have a lot of competition examining the year-after impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on rural Louisiana and Mississippi. The goal was to highlight some of the impacts and recovering lives in rural areas that weren't going to be on CNN or the front page of the major newspapers.

One of the first things I did was look at National Agricultural Statistics Service data on Louisiana crops and livestock. Rice planting was down dramatically and they had lost a lot of cattle as well. Those things helped tell me the types of farmers that likely were impacted hardest, which turned out to be true. I made some calls ahead of time, talking to the Louisiana and Mississippi Farm Bureau about members who were affected by the hurricanes. I leaned heavily on county extension agents. Other times I just found people to talk to while driving. One of the better stories in the series came about in Cameron Parish right along the coastal highway when I saw a father and son building this steel framed building about 15 feet off the ground. It was going to be the frame for their new home. Turns out they raised cattle and corralled cattle for a bunch of people during the onset of the hurricanes. They were among the few people who had stayed to rebuild and had been living in a fifth-wheel trailer ever since the storm.

I wrote the vast majority of this series "on the fly." I wanted this to be fast-paced for myself, much like I would work if this were a breaking story. I treated it just like a daily spot news story as if I were writing about the hurricanes as they happened. My editors did want a port story so I started that one before I left on the trip with a lot of phone calls to barge operators long the ports. I set up to meet with a port staffer for a tour shortly after I landed in New Orleans. He showed me around and had some data on how the reports recovered after the floods. That allowed me to move my first story the afternoon I arrived in Louisiana. I then headed west out of New Orleans into rural parts of the state.

I would hit an area of the state during the day, interviewing people, driving around assessing damage, ask about where to go or who to talk to next, then move on. Once I got to a cafe, coffee shop or hotel in the evening, then I would compile everything I had and start writing. I was pretty much searching for any place where I could get a wireless connection and some coffee. Most of the ledes focused on individual family or circumstances, then I would broaden it out into overall impacts or attempts at recovery. I generally could find some NASS information or other reports to back up just what I had uncovered that day. I typically get the phone numbers of people I interviewed and would call them back for more details and to check some facts in the story as well.

As far as talking with editors during the week, I was out of touch a lot. My cell service didn't work through much of rural Louisiana until I would get to a town of some size. That was partially why I also was spending a lot of time looking for wireless connections to move the stories as well.

I thought one of my biggest failures on this trip was the realization that I should have taken a camera. Coming from a major newspaper background, I was used to having photographers there to shoot for me. I didn't bring a camera on the trip and I really regretted that. I think it would have enhanced the stories a great deal. One thing it did require me to do, however, was write a lot of detail into the articles about what I was seeing as I traveled. I couldn't assume the reader would understand the continued devastation because I didn't have any photos to illustrate it. I had to explain that to the readers so it hurt the presentation of the articles, but probably greatly helped the writing of them, if that makes sense.

It ended up being one of the more exciting weeks I've had covering agriculture. Beyond the news, it was real eye-opening seeing some different types of farming, ranging from rice to crawdads to alligators. I really got to see a different type of culture than what I'm used to given that rural Louisiana is so dominate with seafood and fish while I'm used to red meat everywhere. They don't have bottles of ketchup at the diner table, they have Tabasco sauce.

I had to explain my background to a lot of people as well. They weren't aware of what DTN was all about. I talked a lot comparing and contrasting the rural areas of the Midwest compared to Louisiana and Mississippi. I had to show them I had an "ag background."

That tends to work both ways. While I always covered the Midwest, I didn't get heavily involved in agricultural journalism until I started working on a cattle fraud case in rural Missouri and Iowa in 2001 while I was at the Omaha World-Herald. We covered the case pretty aggressively, which the FBI later declared was the largest cattle fraud in U.S. history. It required me to learn a great deal about the cattle industry and pricing. By 2003, I was the World-Herald's full-time agriculture reporter just as bovine spongiform encephalopathy became big news. My reporting on the livestock industry in Nebraska allowed me to earn agriculture reporter of the year by the North American Agricultural Journalists group. It then caused me to consider working for DTN and covering ag news for a "trade media."

I wasn't aware of the American Agricultural Editors' Association until I started working for DTN. It's far bigger than NAAJ and when I attended the convention in Louisville, Ky., I got a real feel for the networking opportunities. I was surprised by the awards for the hurricane stories and since then, the recognition has opened a lot of doors.

If I had to advise students about anything in their professional career, it's to be prolific in your writing and reporting. I use a lot of baseball analogies and to me daily journalism is like going to bat. The more you swing, the better chance you have of getting on base, or the front page. There are a lot of stories that strike out, don't pan out or just never really get out of the infield like you think they might. But then there are times when you hit that sweet spot and the story becomes a home run. It doesn't happen, though, unless you are willing to keep stepping in the batter's box and chase the ball.

I'll share a little anecdote. I was at an AAEA regional meeting in Des Moines last year. This speaker asked if anyone knew how many home runs Babe Ruth had in his career. A lot of us sounded off "714." Then he asked how many strike outs Ruth had. I was the only one who knew Ruth had 1,330 and I was kind of tickled by that. I knew it because I always keep in mind even someone like Ruth would strike out more often than they hit a home run.