Virtual Expert: Dan Looker,

Senior Business Editor

Successful Farming magazine

Says Dan: "I've been something of a nerd since 4th Grade, when my teacher, Mrs. Carr, had me lecturing classmates about dinosaurs. My latest nerdly activity is on @g Online, as the unofficial Webmaster of marketing.

"For Successful Farming, I cover Washington policy, farm business management and marketing strategies and industry trends.

"My wife, Joan, and I served in the Peace Corps in Colombia years ago. We worked with low-income cattle farmers. We have three children ­ two adult daughters and a 12-year-old son. I enjoy bicycling and mountaineering; Colorado's Long's Peak and Washington's Mount Rainier are my highest summits.

"Not long ago, I also ran (and powerwalked) in the annual Pikes Peak Ascent race. It was an interesting and rewarding experience. But I think I enjoyed myself more just hiking to the summit the following year with my son and one of my daughters. We had more time to talk and enjoy the views."

Dan's phone: 515-284-3872

E-mail: dan.looker@meredith.com

Dan won first place in the 2003 AAEA Writing Awards program in the Internet Breaking News category with his story, "An Evening with Fidel Castro."

Q&A with Dan Looker

The planning stage: Please give some background on why you chose the story topic that won your award. What gave you the idea for that topic? Why now? What were your goals when you began to plan the story?

Dan: In truth, there was little planning for this story. It's a spot news story that won the Internet Breaking News contest category. The story, "An Evening with Fidel Castro," describes a dinner with the Cuban leader that was attended by a group of Iowans. They were in Cuba as part of an agricultural exposition to promote U.S. food products. I was covering the trade show for our magazine and for our Web site. I read books and news stories about Cuba and the exposition before I left for Cuba. And I interviewed the Iowans several times before joining them at their dinner with Castro.

The fact gathering stage: How did you choose the people to interview for your story? What were your primary sources of information? Did you use the Web? How and where did you conduct interviews? Did you do the interviews face-to-face, phone, or email, and which is best? How did you get good information and good quotes from your sources? How did you determine who to interview, and when did you know you'd done enough interviews?

Dan: Fidel Castro is one of the few surviving adversaries of the U.S. from the Cold War era. That he has survived this long, especially after the fall of his patron, the Soviet Union, is remarkable. The embargo against U.S. trade with Cuba has been lifted enough to allow the sale of food to Castro's government. But most Americans haven't had a chance to visit Cuba legally, let alone spend time face to face with this brilliant, sometimes charming and sometimes ruthless dictator. Accepting an invitation from the Iowans to go along with them on their state dinner was a no-brainer. I thought that both Castro, and the event, had fascinating possibilities as a story. Not only was this a glimpse into forbidden territory, but it also showed the lengths that America's entrepreneurial farmers and food companies will go to sell their products.

The writing stage: Why or how did you choose the story lead? Did you outline the story or organize the general flow ahead of time, before you began to write? What writing style did you choose, and why? How many re-writes did you do? How did you choose sidebar stories? Did you have an editor or a colleague review your story, offer suggestions, look for "holes" in your reporting? How do you check facts?

Dan: I began this story with a combination of a descriptive lead and a situational lead. I wanted to make the reader feel as if he or she were in Cuba. And I also wanted to show the determination of Iowa's agriculture secretary, as well as setting the scene for the banquet with Castro. I tried to do that in the first two paragraphs. If you've never been to the Tropics, you have no idea how humid it can be. That's why I described Ag Secretary Patty Judge's glasses fogging up. I thought that image might help convey what it feels like to be there.

This story was fairly long, so I scratched out a rough outline. I wanted to accomplish several things with this story. First, I wanted it to flow in a narrative style, to describe what Castro and his "Palace of the Revolution" were like, as well as his interests. At the same time, I interspersed information about the Ag Expo, so that the reader would know what it had accomplished and its significance as the first U.S. food trade show in Cuba in more than 40 years. And I tried to show what the Iowans' were aiming for ­ a big sale from the man who has the ultimate authority to buy food for Cuba's 11 million people.

I did not rewrite the entire story, although I polished and rearranged several paragraphs. Although this story was about a Friday evening dinner and it did not appear on our Web site until the following Monday, I wrote it under the same deadline pressure as a daily newspaper or wire service story. The dinner with Castro ended at about 1 a.m. I had to get up early the next morning for my only chance to visit a Cuban farm. On Sunday I conducted interviews at the trade show. I didn't write the story until Sunday evening, finishing it early Monday morning. Like many on-deadline stories, this one did not allow time to check facts too thoroughly. I double-checked some information by asking several people the same questions during the dinner. And I had one book about Cuba with me. I also wrote a sidebar to the article that explained how I got to go along with this group on their dinner with Castro.

How did you begin your career? What advice do you have for those graduating? What does it mean to be a member of AAEA? How do you maintain a high standard of ethics in your writing and your career?

Dan: I began my writing career as a general assignment reporter for the Lincoln (Nebraska) Star newspaper while I was in college at the University of Nebraska, where I majored in English. My first full-time job was as the sole full-time reporter for the Northfield News in Northfield, Minnesota. It was a weekly newspaper with high standards and a dedicated editor named Maggie Lee. I covered city government, school board meetings and education, police and fire news and wrote feature articles. Northfield is home to two colleges, Carleton and St. Olaf, so I also had a chance to cover some great speakers, including the anthropologist Margaret Mead. If you can find a weekly newspaper like that, it's a great way to get experience in a wide variety of types of journalism.

I began writing about agriculture a few years later when I joined the staff of the Center for Rural Affairs in Walthill, Nebraska, on a one-year grant. I was hired to write and edit its monthly newsletter and to edit and write for a quarterly tabloid that used magazine-style writing. It was called The New Land Review. The Center is a nonprofit advocacy group that has high standards of accuracy. Some of its stories and policy work on behalf of independent family-operated farms were controversial. Its leaders knew that the organization would be attacked if it used inaccurate information. Working there was almost like attending graduate school in rural history, economics and policy.

There is no easy way to maintain high standards in journalism. Most publications, no matter how large or how small, face commercial pressures to weaken coverage of controversial issues. Ultimately, it will be your publisher, not your editor, who will set the standards. My advice is to choose that publisher as carefully as you can when you are hired. And at some point in your life, you may have to decide which is more important ­ a job in journalism or a career in journalism. You may loose a job over a conflict over standards (a rare event in my experience), but in so doing, you'll keep your own integrity. If you are talented, that may be the best ultimate decision for your career. This is obviously not a frivolous decision. Or, you may decide that one particular job is more important than any other career goals and you could be forced to make compromises you don't like. A certain amount of compromise is necessary in every job, of course. AAEA has high goals that may not always be found in the real world of publishing, but membership is a great way to network with other journalists and to follow trends in the industry. The organization also offers many worthwhile professional improvement workshops.