Use Research to Your Advantage

By John V. Wood, TAF member/blog editor

In my 20+ years as a broadcast journalist, I learned the hard way that verifying your sources BEFORE going on air with a story is the way to go. Working as an TV assignment editor, we would hear police scanner traffic alerting us to potential breaking news stories, and every once in awhile, an overzealous or jaded law enforcement officer might drop an irresistible news nugget over the airwaves – something that is in no way true – just to see who was listening on the other end.

As a freelance writer, this scenario might not happen to you exactly, but it doesn’t make research any less important. When looking into a story, a writer must use research to their advantage in order to make their story as strong as humanly possible. Here are a few research tips that every writer should follow:

1. Talk to people “in the know”

I am an extroverted person by nature, so this is actually very easy for me. I usually research a story idea locally – by reading newspapers, magazines, or online local sources – and then I would just talk to people about the story. Not interviews per se, but story-related conversations. I wrote a story about my hometown for Our State Magazine several years ago, and you would think research was not necessary. Not true! I went to several local hangouts to just people watch, listen to every day stories, and talk to longtime residents about where Clayton began, where it’s going, and how it got there. That local flavor gave my story color, in between interviews and statistics.

The people “in the know” might identify source material for you that you didn’t originally know existed. They might help you understand the story on a deeper level before your first pivotal interview. This may not always be possible for the stories you work on, but it’s something that really helps fill in the gaps for a piece you may not be as familiar with.

2. Verify your sources

This is an underrated tactic, and one that should be used a lot more. Let’s say you get a great interview about a story you are working on, and you run with the story to your publisher with just that one source. Why is that a bad thing, you ask? As a writer, you’ve just written a one-sided story, and it is not as flushed out as it should be…in order to be fair to your sources and your story.

The majority of stories you will write as a freelancer will have multiple sides, and a good freelancer should interview multiple sources for a story in order to verify the information. You would not usually do that if you are doing a profile on a celebrity in which you directly interview that person. However, if you are working on the impact of COVID-19 on retail stores or restaurants, you are going to talk to researchers with the NC Department of Health and Human Services and at least one business owner or employee. Can you imagine that story without one of those sides being represented? The more pieces you include to verify your source material or strengthen your overall story, the better.

3. Let research determine your story outline

When I first started writing decades ago, I was working in many different markets of which I had no original knowledge – TheHorse.com, Chiropractic Economics, Cure Today, among others. When editors gave me stories to write, I had to do a ton of research before I ever did my first interview. The result – I would be able to let my interviews structure my stories. It was like starting a puzzle without any edge pieces, letting my interviews create that exterior structure I needed in order to finish the assignment. The story was inevitably stronger because of my research, letting the people involved tell a much stronger and more compelling story than I ever could.

As a writer, using your sources to tell your stories is an invaluable tactic. In my career, I have found that my best and most solid articles are the ones in which my interviewee’s voices make the story happen, and my words introduce and transition between sources. When in doubt, talk to someone in the know about your story idea. Those interviews only make your stories stronger.

Here’s to a strong writing (and researching) year for everyone in 2022!