Story Behind the Story: The ESE article

Club reporting is usually relatively easy. You interview the teacher who sponsors it. You sit in on a couple of their meetings and interview a few members. Then you take the quotes you've gathered and write a nice little lead-quote-transition article.

ESE was not like that. For starters, Estudiantes Sirviendo en Espanol only meets for about 15 minutes in the morning before school a couple of times each month. And we only had two weeks to throw together the holiday issue before school let out for Christmas.

To make things even worse, I wasn't going to be able to tag along when they went to give out the presents. There's a gap between when we finish the paper and when the paper comes out, because we have to send it to the printers. Then they have to find time to print it, and someone has to drive the papers from Maryville back to Oak Ridge. All that can take anywhere from 2 days to a week. And they were going to go give out the presents right in the middle of that gap.

I knew I really wanted to open the story with a description of the kids recieving the presents, but it's almost impossible to do a good job with those unless it's something you've seen for yourself.

The only other way to do a scene-setter lead is to talk to the people who were there last year. And almost all of them had graduated.

So when I went in to this story I was freaking out. I wasn't sure I could pull it off.

Still, the thing to do when you're trying to write a story when the odds are against you, is to start simple. I got out of my second period class and interviewed Sra. Chialvo. Most of it was about going to give the kids the presents last year. I asked her for details. How did the kids react? What did the mother say? What toys were they most excited about?

Don't be afraid to ask your source for help. I also asked her who else was in ESE, who went to the give last year, and she was able to help me set up times to interview students in her fifth period class and one of the people who went the year before.

That still didn't solve the problem. Agie, Ima, and Neesha hadn't gone to the gift giving the year before, and didn't have much to say about the thing except "we're collecting toys and stuff to help the underpriveliged." Quotes that state the obvious really aren't very much help, so I changed the subject to something they did know about- the tutoring part of ESE.

Which wasn't something I was planning on, but it helped add another dimension to the story and paint a more complete picture of ESE.

The interview with the one person who had actually gone to give the presents happened before homeroom. Considering, it was a pretty good interview, but it's really hard to interview when there are people jostling past you on their way to homeroom. if you can, schedule an interview in a place where there aren't very many people around, like talking to teachers during their planning period.

Writing the article wasn't easy. I had two people's accounts of what had happened, but it was still kind of sketchy. And I wasn't that comfortable using my imagination to fill in the gaps, because what if I made something up and it wasn't accurate?

There was no time for follow-up interviews, so I just focused on the facts I did gather.

And it worked! I actually got several compliments on this article, which is pretty unusual for a news-feature. Sra. Chialvo said she loved it and that she was going to put it in her scrapbook. 

so THE MORAL OF THIS LONG AND VERY BORING STORY: is that in journalism, no matter what the obstacles are, if you keep trying, you'll wind up with something. Even if it's not the story you started out with. The only way to fail journalism is to give up.