4 takeaways:
➀ Take a step outside the Beltway. When Abby Phillip – now anchor and senior political correspondent at CNN – left her “flashy” and “cool” job covering the White House to cover campaign finances and lobbying, she did it to learn how to tell other parts of the story, she told Paul Miller fellows May 9. “I’ve made a lot of career shifts really in that vein. Trying to get other perspectives, taking on different roles that might be unfamiliar to me, or even uncomfortable for me, but in service of developing new skills and in service of understanding the world and the story a little bit better from different perspectives,” Phillip said. “That trip up and down Pennsylvania Avenue is really not that long, and the longer you stay here and the longer you stay in that bubble,” she said. “It’s really important to get out of here.” [Transcript | Video ]
➁ Use your judgment when determining whether to share extreme views. Ignoring the things people don’t like doesn’t make them go away, Phillip said. However, it’s important to approach extremism with caution and to cover things with appropriate context. “If someone is telling us in a story that Black people are mentally inferior than white people, we’re not going to place that viewpoint on equal footing as other things because we know that is false,” Phillip said. “In our work, we have to use our judgment – not just about whether we acknowledge the existence of things that might be unsavory, or that people don’t like, or that might be bigoted or racist or whatever –but where we put them, how we prioritize them, how we contextualize them, how we fact-check them in our work.”
➂ Prioritize finding voices you don’t usually hear from. You can add a lot of value to your story by finding a voice of someone who is affected when you’re covering what’s happening in Washington. “Whether it’s a restaurant owner who’s affected by a bill that has to do with small businesses or a family of four who’s affected by a bill about childcare, finding just one voice to add context to a story can sometimes make a really big difference.” During this voting cycle, the more you talk to real people, the richer your stories are going to become. “Voters are always the ones who are making the narratives… I feel like are going to surprise us by how they’re approaching certain issues and what they tell us that they care about.” Phillips said to go where people aren’t going. That’s what will get you the most distinctive stories.
➃ Analyze the patterns you’re seeing and hearing. Phillips quickly learned how to find patterns when she started out in Washington as a Politico intern. “They handed me a book that … was just like a spreadsheet of all the expenses of each congressional office. They were like, ‘This just came out. Look through it for a story.’” What she found was Sen. Schumer spending huge amounts of money on private flights in and around New York. When you see something repeating, it might be the source of a story. Even if you’re not looking at a spreadsheet, find patterns within topics. If you’re hearing it on Capitol Hill, from lawmakers in a different state, from activists, what does that tell you about where this is all headed?” Phillip said. “That is like the beginning of how you develop your analytical brain from a political perspective.”
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