I asked Alexa James from the Times Herald-Record in upstate New York to give us some background on her series about a high school musical. Alexa is a still-new-to-newspapers beat reporter and it was her first attempt at a series. You'd never know it. I ate it up, and I'm sure readers did, too.
Here's Alexa:
Started as an idea that had been floating around in my head for a while. Knew it had been done before, at big papers. Thought it could work here too. Of the two school districts I cover (Valley Central and the gigantic Newburgh Enlarged City School District) I thought VC was more universal. That's clutch at a paper like ours, which covers three counties that usually could care less about one another.
Talked with VC administration about it off and on for months, but almost missed call backs. I had a funny feeling I should check in at the school, and what do you know, the audition were that night! So I just showed up. At least I was already familiar with the show (I did it in high school.)
After auditions, I was hooked because I knew I'd have great access. The director was candid and unguarded, and because she'd been with the district so long, she didn't have anyone (administration) looking over her shoulder. I could come and go as I pleased. The kids gave me cell phones and myspace pages and plenty of info I could have done without.
The trick, as always, was convincing the editors to take the bait. We batted it around at some casual meetings, but I really twisted my regional editor's arm. He probably said Ok just to get me out of the office. I was banking on the fact that he'd sell it big when the time came.
I never promised the kids, teachers or parents anything (because I wasn't convinced the paper would stick with me.) I just told them I was going to do something about their show. They found out that week, along with yours truly, that three consecutive stories would run in the daily news section.
The reporting came easy, maybe because I have a 17-year-old brother, or maybe because all the girls liked my heels, but what surprised me most about the whole process was how few questions I had to ask. There was not one scheduled-in-advance or phone interview. You just show up, and the teenagers suck you into their lives. The hard part was keeping up. They can sing, dance, solve math equations, talk on the phone, plan outfits, flirt and scavenge for food all at the same time. They don't edit their personal lives. I actually learned a lot about them from the questions they asked me.
All that and the week before I was terrified that I didn't have a story.
1) Nothing Earth-shattering had happened. No tragedies, no scandals, no close-calls. In all, the whole process rolled along as planned. That's not news.
2) Because nothing outrageous happened, I neglected to dump my notebooks. I just carried them around in a grocery bag, figuring I'd probably lost all the good ones anyway. I was afraid to type up my notes because I didn't know if I had enough. I was out of time, and now, the editors were finally on board and expecting three stories.
The only real plot point I'd pin-pointed early was Ed's haircut. I told him from day one that I wanted to be there when he finally shaved his head. I reminded him every time I saw him. "Now, Ed," I'd say. "What are you going to do before you get your hair cut?" "Call Alexa," he'd say. "Show me my number in your cell phone. Ok, good. Don't forget."
The call came on a Saturday: "Uhh, Alexa." "Hey, Ed. What's up?" "I think I'm gonna get my hair cut today." "Cool. Where and when?" "Uh, I think I'm gonna need a ride, so whatever works for you."
When I finally dumped the notebooks, I realized that since I'd never done any formal interviews with well-planned questions, what I really had was just a massive collection of things that amused me about teenagers. It seemed super generic, but when I talked about it with friends, those things seemed to amuse them too.
So I was counting on my little collection to appeal to readers, for whatever reason. Maybe they have teens. Maybe they were in a musical or on a sports team or a math team or whatever. The process is the same - young people putting themselves out there to see what will happen to their identities if they do.
A fellow reporter, John Doherty, read the rough drafts and really helped me close the seams and pace the action. As for the editors, on the first day I just dumped it in their laps and crossed my fingers. They liked it, thank God, and left me and Doherty to our own devices the next two days. Luckily, nothing too crazy happened anywhere in Orange, Ulster or Sullivan counties those three days (though the Grand Rebbe almost died) so the stories got nice play.
They ran consecutively, and the last one came out on opening night. It was bizarre to still be hanging out with the kids as their personal stories were playing out in the paper. Plus, I was still reporting for the last piece.
I never gave them clues about what I was going to write about, but everything that ran was stuff we'd talked about at least a few times throughout the course of reporting. In other words, I knew they'd recognize their own details and conversations when they saw them in print.
I also inconspicuously double-checked stuff I was planning to use during the last few rehearsals to make sure my older notes were still sharp.
The day before the first story ran, I gave them a little speech about how I could never squeeze a cast of 60 people into a story by name; about how I had to write a series that would mean something to people that had never met them, had never been to Montgomery or Valley Central High School, and maybe, had never even seen a musical.
They got the point, and they liked the results. I didn't even get any parental complaints, which is miraculous when writing anything about anybody's kids.
So there you go. You actually can have fun now and then writing good stuff about a school district. But you'll probably have to do it on your own time. (At one point, two weeks out, I was reminding the photo dept. that we needed to shoot a dress rehearsal and the response was, "Is this that story about the high school musical? Who cares.")
Ha ha. Anyway, glad you like it. Thanks for the post.
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