5 takeaways:
➀ Pre-writing saves you time and increases peace of mind. Lydia Wheeler, a senior reporter at Bloomberg Law, said it’s important to keep track of the Supreme Court’s schedule of events. On Fridays, the justices have a “court conference” to choose cases they’re going to take and reject each term, Wheeler said. On Friday afternoon, the list of “yes” cases comes out, and on Monday, the list of “no” cases is released. Both make the news and are “fodder for stories,” she said. At one point, Wheeler was following three health care cases and had pre-writes for them with different leads based on if the court took or rejected the case. “I could just delete which top is the wrong one, keep the right one and then ship it off to my editor so they can quickly hit publish,” she said. Pre-writes are also helpful for after arguments. “You don’t want to spend your time formalizing your story and writing the background of the case,” Wheeler said.
➁ Set yourself apart by taking on enterprise stories. Covering the Supreme Court is driven by its schedule of cases, and there’s not much unplanned, breaking news, said Todd Ruger, a senior legal affairs staff writer at CQ Roll Call. “It all begins and ends with the docket,” he said. Although there’s a competitive corps of reporters who cover Supreme Court cases, every case now has an electronic docket with various documents and “tons of entry points.” You can look at case arguments and zoom in. “What if I just focus on this or the person doing it?” You can zoom out: “Where does this fit in a greater scheme of things? How is it playing in Congress? Is there any legislation on it?” Ruger encouraged reporters to also beyond the docket and look at outside players for case information.
➂ Localization matters. Washington may be the epicenter of a lot of action, but there can be impactful stories no matter where you’re based. Cristian Farias, founding editor of Inquest, suggested interviewing locals to get their thoughts about pressing Supreme Court issues or cases. “That would be a far more interesting story than doing the same writeup that everybody is doing about the same case nationally,” Farias said. If you’re in a city or state where an action or lawsuit first started, you can get good quotes from some “scrappy figures and characters that rarely ever make it into the Supreme Court or the arguments that the justices deal with.” Reading up on the local coverage can spark story ideas that can make your reporting stand out.
➃ Don’t fall for the myth that the justices are overworked and all-knowing. A constitutional law professor at Georgetown Law, Louis Michael Seidman, said that the number of decided cases from the court has dropped from about 160 a generation ago to about 70. “By my calculation, each justice writes about 220 pages in a year’s work. That’s far less than most [journalists] write, and unlike hard-working journalists, they have lots of help,” he said. The justices have access to briefs, librarians and law clerks who “ghostwrite many of the opinions for them.” Seidman doesn’t deny that the justices are smart, but they aren’t geniuses, he said. Criminal cases are on the court’s docket, but no sitting justice has “ever served as a defense attorney,” he said. As far as their educational résumés, most of them have little or no background in the social sciences, philosophy, literature or the hard sciences, he added.
➄ Going to law school may help, but it’s not necessary. Not having a law degree “hasn’t been anything that has stood in my way,” Wheeler said. Indeed, you can be a successful Supreme Court reporter without one because the basic journalistic skills that help you succeed on any beat transfer to the court beat, she said. “The law is always made out to seem like it’s way more complex… mystified than it really is. Don’t be intimidated.” Farias has a law degree and said you don’t need one to cover the courts. Reading legal issues and good writing on the Supreme Court are sufficient. Chris Geidner, a columnist at MSNBC, also has a law degree but said the most important skills on the court beat are being able to understand how legal issues affect ordinary people and being able to explain complex legal cases in a digestible way. “Those are not skills that you’re going to learn in law school,” he said.
Speakers:
Cristian Farias, Founding Editor, Inquest; Senior Fellow, Institute to End Mass Incarceration, Harvard Law School
Chris Geidner, Columnist, MSNBC
Todd Ruger, Senior Legal Affairs Staff Writer, CQ Roll Call
Louis Michael Seidman, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown Law
Lydia Wheeler, Senior Reporter, Bloomberg Law
This program, part of the Paul Miller Fellowship, was funded by the Walter and Karla Goldschmidt Foundation and other donations to the National Press Foundation, which is solely responsible for its content.
