January 14th, 2008
by
Patrick Thornton
Yoni has some great advice in this post. Go to his blog
to read more.
Bottom line - this is a great way to build a beat blog from the ground up. It doesn’t have to be technical. An "email newsletter" is perhaps one of the best ways to start.
Newsletters - your secret to developing sources
One of the challenges reporters face in covering any beat, be it municipal or specialty, is developing sources and proving to the people you cover (who increasingly don’t read your newspaper at least not the print version) that you actually DO write about them. An approach that I’ve encouraged my reporters to use is to publish their own email newsletter, call it “[insert reporters name]’s Weekly Update.”
An introduction that includes an overview of the week, including any big events that occurred.
A list of the articles you’ve written including links and a summary of each piece (heck, grab your lede or the top few graphs).
A numerical count of all the times the town, institution or agency appeared in the paper. Most people don’t have the helicopter view that would include news, sports, features, communities, etc.
A sampling of events in the upcoming week that you’re planning on covering.
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