Virtual Expert: Urban Lehner

Urban Lehner was awarded first place in the Issues category in the 2007 AAEA Writing Awards Program.

The planning stage?

My series described the vulnerability of U.S. farm subsidies to WTO challenge and how that vulnerability might affect the 2007 farm-bill debate. At the outset I was well aware that most producers find the WTO uninteresting, mystifying, even vaguely threatening. I chose to write the series anyway because like it or not, the WTO's rules and the decisions of its dispute panels can reshape our farm programs. Producers need to understand that.

Having covered international trade and economics for many years in a previous incarnation, I understood the issue and even found it interesting. My goal for the series was to explain the issue with clarity and verve--to make it understandable and interesting to DTN readers.

Over the years, I've often done my best work when tackling topics I knew a lot about and cared a lot about.

Fact-gathering?

Like Captain Renault in "Casablanca," I rounded up the usual suspects. The obvious people to interview included the politicians responsible for the farm bill, and I talked to the chairmen of the agriculture committees in both the House and Senate. I also interviewed a number of ag economists and former USDA and USTR officials. Of particular importance was an interview with Daniel Sumner, an ag economist at the University of California at Davis. He had worked with the Brazilians on their WTO case against the U.S. cotton-subsidies program and had detailed knowledge of the debate over the implications of that case on payments for corn, soybeans and other program crops.

I did face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews and follow-up email questions. I also read widely on the subject, everything from wire-service stories to think-tank papers. Most of what I read I found on the Internet.

I sometimes record interviews but for this series I did not. It didn't seem necessary, as I had a very clear idea of what I needed to make the story work. I generally find recording useful when I'm throwing a wider net than I was throwing for this story.

One key to getting good quotes is interviewing people you know are quotable. Several of my sources for this series were people I'd talked to before. Another key is pushing sources to be specific. "Can you give me an example of that?" should be among a reporter's most frequently asked questions.

You can also try leading the source. If he or she says something important blandly, try asking for confirmation by restating the idea more quotably yourself: "In other words, are you saying.?" This may prompt the source to restate his idea in a more colorful way. The risk is the source may accept your restatement with a simple "yes," leaving you empty-handed. To get around that, you might intentionally stretch or exaggerate in the wording of your restatement question, encouraging the source to rephrase his idea along the lines of "Well, not so much that as.." Obviously this is a technique to be used with some care.

For this series, I collected interviews in between other work over the course of several weeks. I probably could have stopped earlier but I was having fun with the reporting and wanted to have the luxury of using only the very best quotes and anecdotes. I often leave as much as 90 percent of my material on the cutting-room floor. In this case, I would have continued reporting had I been able to travel overseas for some interviews, but I just didn't have the time for that.

Writing stage?

I spent most of my career at a newspaper--The Wall Street Journal--that's justly famous for anecdotal leads. Yet I consciously avoided anecdotal leads in this series. That's because in my view different kinds of stories require different kinds of leads. Anecdotal leads are fine for trend stories, survey pieces or even light features. They don't work as well on analytical, explanatory pieces like those in the WTO series. Even sharp anecdotes that precisely illustrate the theme of the story (and too many alas do not) often take too long to get to the point, and getting to the point quickly is critical in an explanatory story. Of course, the main requirement for any lead, anecdotal or not, is that it grab readers by the lapel and make them want to continue reading.

I am a compulsive outliner, especially for projects involving large numbers of interviews. In fact, I often do three outlines. The first is more like an index to my notes. I assign page numbers to my notebooks and then make lists of the best facts, quotes, anecdotes and ideas in my notes. I then underline the best of the best, vowing to find a home for them in the story. Having done that, I start the second outline, which is not so much an outline of the story as it is an outline of the ideas in the story. Step one is to write the theme sentence of the story as sharply and precisely as possible. Step two is to identify the key points that support the theme. When writing a trend or survey story, I will make sure I include both causes and effects of the idea contained in the theme sentence. After I've sketched the bare branches of this second outline, I go back to the first and pluck out facts, anecdotes and quotes to hang on the branches--the specifics that support the general statement. Once I've done all this, outlining the story is simple. It's just a matter of deciding when to say what.

Having said all this, I don't necessarily recommend my method to others. It works for me, but I suspect it would drive many people crazy.

Perhaps because of the way I outline, my first drafts often end up saying too much. The transitions in particular are too elaborate. The next day, looking at the draft again, I simplify. This usually involves cutting but brevity isn't the main point of the rewrite; the main point is to make the piece move faster. One rewrite is usually sufficient for me.

I like sidebars, but DTN's menu structure discourages their use. I write at the office, at home, on airplanes, on scraps of note paper at odd moments, whenever the muse moves me. I often show drafts to colleagues before turning in copy to be edited.

Background about your professional career?

I came to ag journalism late in my career, joining DTN as editor-in-chief in July 2003. Before that I spent 33 years at The Wall Street Journal, including stints as a reporter, bureau chief, managing editor, editor-in-chief, publisher and vice president. For twenty of those years I was based overseas, in Tokyo, Brussels and Hong Kong; the other 13 I spent in the Journal's New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington and Detroit bureaus.

AAEA plays an important role in improving the overall quality of agricultural journalism and providing ag journalists with networking opportunities. I'm encouraging DTN reporters and editors to become more active participants in AAEA activities.

Any other advice for students?

Don't worry too much about objectivity. I don't mean you should start with a conclusion and then use your reporting to find information that supports it. But if you've done your reporting thoroughly and with an open mind, the end product should be more than a mess of facts. It should include a point of view on what they mean. Points of view are inherently subjective, but that's OK; the important thing is for your subjective point of view to flow from the facts you reported rather than from bias or ideological conviction. Of course, you should be scrupulous about accuracy; you should be intellectually honest and not stretch your evidence for the sake of making a point; and your story should provide balance by acknowledging other ways of interpreting the evidence. But if you do all that, you'll be fine. So don't worry about subjectivity and objectivity. Worry about accuracy, fairness and intellectual honesty.

Most news organizations have codes of ethics these days. In an era when the public distrusts all institutions, including the media, they're a necessity. Unethical journalists not only discredit the organs for which they write; they discredit all.