ABSTRACT
Mrs Beeton’s nineteenth-century recipe famously began ‘first, catch your hare’. The reporter’s task is: first, find your story. No newspaper or news bulletin would sell without stories, and it is the reporter’s job to find them. Much news can be anticipated and is the routine of daily life. These diary stories, as they are called, are tracked by the newsdesk as part of their forward planning and allocated to the reporter. They can be anything from a flower show to a United Nations press conference. Whatever the event, they all share one thing in common – someone wants you to cover the event and publish or broadcast stories about it. The flower show organiser wants local people to know about the show and its winners; the United Nations conference wants to tell the world of some new initiative and enhance the reputation of the UN. Stories that are not pre-ordained are often more interesting. The off-diary story is one discovered by the reporter on his/her own initiative, and is often a story someone, somewhere, doesn’t want covered – whether the local MP’s expenses scandal or the local mayor’s illegal drug habit. Diary stories are the bread and butter of most local newspapers and radio stations – but it is the off-diary story, particularly if it is exclusive, that interests the good reporter, and it is a mark of status within the newsroom to be taken off the diary and allowed to work completely on one’s own initiative investigating stories.
