Beat Reporting: What Does it Take to be the Best?

Chip Scanlan knows journalism.
He worked for the Washington, D.C.bureau for Knight Ridder. He also worked at the St. Petersburg Times and the Providence Journal. From 1994-2009, he was a faculty member of the Poynter Institute, which provides training for journalists.
In 2002, he wrote an article about beat reporting.
"The best beat reporters I’ve known are well-organized, determined, with a clear sense of mission and a wide range of sources. They are constantly reading about the beat and striving to learn new things. They are well-versed in the language, issues and events that matter. They are judged by the breadth of their knowledge and their success at communicating the important stories on their beats," Scanlan wrote.
Click here to read more about his view on beat reporting.

If there are graphic novels, why not graphic journalism?

Dan Archer  "comics journalist" and a recent John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford. Here's how he introduces the concept of comics journalism.
"To some, the only connection between comics and newspapers is in the funny pages, or a single panel editorial cartoon. However, a new breed of journalist is emerging: one that is as comfortable conducting interviews and following leads as he or she is sitting behind a drawing board with brush pens."
Click here to read the first of a two-part series on comics journalism. Hey, is this something we can try on Menlo Oak?
Click here to check out Archer's site "Archcomix."

Associated Press publishes 'situational stylebook' for Sept. 11 anniversary

This September will mark the 10-year anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks. It’s an occasion that will be commemorated, both on the day itself and, in many cases, in the weeks leading up to it, with journalistic coverage of the events and their aftermath.
To assist its members as they create that coverage, the Associated Press just released a style and reference guide whose content is dedicated to 9/11.
The guide is intriguing — not only as a useful tool for the many journalists who will be, in some way or another, writing about 9/11 over the next few weeks, but also as a hint at what a Stylebook can be when it’s thought of not just as a book, but as a resource more broadly, says Megan Garber, writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab. AP’s guide (official name: “Sept. 11 Style and Reference Guide”) is a kind of situational stylebook, an ad hoc amalgam of information that will be useful for a particular set of stories, within a particular span of time.
Click here to learn more about the AP's Sept. 11 guide.

Good writing or lack of transparency?

Paul Farhi of the Washington Post started a controversy with a story that pointed out that the highly-regarded New Yorker story that reconstructed the raid that led U.S. military forces to, and ultimately kill,  Osama Bin-Laden. 
Farhi did not bad mouth the job reporter Nicholas Schmidle did on the article, "Getting Bin Laden". The writing is top notch. No one has disputed the accuracy of the story. The Post's Farhi, takes on Schmidle's sourcing. "He relied on the accounts of others who had debriefed the" SEALs, Farhi wrote. "A casual reader of the article wouldn't know that."
"Neither the article nor an editor’s note describes the sourcing for parts of the story. Schmidle, in fact, piles up so many details about some of the men, such as their thoughts at various times, that the article leaves a strong impression that he spoke with them directly," Farhi added.
What do you think? Did Schmidle and his editors need to add some kind of note or post script about the sources of the story?