Category: Reporting Skills
-
How to Conduct Your First Interview: Prep, Questions, Listening, and Follow-Up
Your first interview will feel awkward. Here is how to walk in prepared, ask questions that actually get answers, and leave with the material you need to write a real story.
-
Source Verification and Fact-Checking for Student Reporters
Publishing a false fact under your byline follows you. Here is a rigorous, practical approach to verifying sources and checking facts before anything goes to print or online.
-
Building a Beat: How to Own a Subject Area and Develop Sources
The reporters who break the best stories are not the ones who chase everything. They are the ones who own one area so thoroughly that sources come to them. Here is how to build that kind of beat.
-
The Student Journalist’s Guide to Public Records and FOIA Requests
Public records laws give journalists legal access to government documents. Student reporters can use these tools too — and often should. Here is how to file effective records requests and what to do when agencies push back.