Sometimes it’s difficult to think on your toes, but it’s much more difficult to come back from not thinking on your toes. As a journalist, you always have to be in the moment, planning everything out long before the story even gets written. The most important thing to do is, even if you think it will make you seem silly, ask questions when you can. Sometimes reporters need to look stupid during the interview so they don’t look stupid after the interview. Think you misheard something? Ask about it. Don’t know what your source is talking about? Ask about it. It’ll help you in the end.
Now I don’t mean to lecture any journalists out there; I’m sure many have figured this out by now. This blog post is mostly to reinforce for myself what I’ve learned this week: Don’t let intimidation stop you from asking the important questions. Timing is everything. Clarifying someone’s title before the story is sent to your editor is a good thing to do because it saves everyone a world of confusion. Asking a source to repeat what he or she has said, especially when it could be very important information, is a good skill to have. Being intimidated doesn’t help anyone; it just makes things more difficult in the end.
This week I was having trouble finding an angle for a story and when one fell right into my lap, I didn’t acknowledge it and let it sit there. Looking back, just asking one clarifying question would have opened up a whole new story that would have been much more interesting than the one I originally wrote. It made me quite disappointed in myself to learn that I’d made such a silly error simply because I believed I’d misheard or misunderstood something. I was confused, but of course no one could’ve known what I was thinking because I didn’t ask.
It’s a good thing that college is a time for learning because every day it becomes more and more apparent to me that I have a lot to learn. I just hope these lessons learned stick quickly or I may end up in over my head.