Questions to Ask Journalists
Questions for a conversation with a working journalist, covering how stories are found, sourced, edited, and corrected. Written for students, career changers, and anyone hosting a reporter on a panel.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What have you been working on this week?
Why ask it
Easier to answer than a question about their career and it starts on their terms. It also gives you something specific to follow up on for the rest of the conversation, which beats a list of prepared questions.
How did you end up on this beat?
Why ask it
Beats are often assigned rather than chosen, and the story of how someone landed on healthcare or local government is usually more candid than a general question about their path. It also reveals how much of a career is accident.
Where do your story ideas actually come from?
Why ask it
Expect something more mundane than inspiration: a court docket, a routine records request, a source they have known for years, a complaint that arrives three times. The answer is the most transferable part of the craft.
How do you decide a tip is worth chasing?
Why ask it
Reporters kill far more ideas than they publish, and the filters they use, whether it can be documented, whether anyone will speak on the record, are the ones they apply within minutes. Watch for whether the standard is provability or interest.
What does a reporting day look like compared with a writing day?
Why ask it
Corrects the common assumption that the job is mostly writing. The honest answer usually involves a great deal of unanswered phone calls and waiting, which is exactly what someone considering the career should hear.
How do you get someone who does not want to talk to you to talk to you?
Why ask it
You are asking for technique, not charm: showing up in person, going through a former colleague, telling them exactly what you already have. Journalists tend to be specific here because it is the skill they practice most.
What do you try to do in the first two minutes of an interview?
Why ask it
Openings are deliberate for professionals: how they identify themselves, whether they explain recording, what they ask first to settle someone. Useful whether or not you ever interview anyone for publication.
What happens when a source asks to go off the record halfway through?
Why ask it
Reveals how they handle a genuinely contested area, since off the record means different things to different people and is often negotiated after the fact. A reporter who has a clear practice here has been burned before.
What happens to your copy between filing and publication?
Why ask it
Most readers assume the byline controls the text. The answer covers editors, lawyers, sub-editing, and cuts for space, and explains why a story can appear blunter or softer than the reporter intended.
How much say do you have over your headlines?
Why ask it
Usually little to none, which is worth knowing before you criticize a reporter for a headline. It also opens up how traffic pressures shape presentation rather than reporting.
How do you verify something you cannot confirm directly?
Why ask it
Ask for the actual mechanics: second independent source, documents, matching accounts against a timeline, or declining to publish. If the answer is only that they trust their sources, that tells you something too.
What was the last correction you had to run, and what caused it?
Why ask it
A pointed question, and most working reporters answer it readily because errors are ordinary. The cause is almost always haste, a misread document, or trusting a single source, which is more instructive than any general point about accuracy.
How do you decide what to leave out?
Why ask it
Every story omits far more than it includes, and the omissions are where judgment and ethics live: a person's private circumstances, an allegation that cannot be stood up, a detail that would identify a source.
What do you feel you owe someone who will be harmed by a story you publish?
Why ask it
There is no settled answer, which is the point. Listen for whether they distinguish between a public official and a private individual, and whether they contact people before publication rather than after.
How has the business side changed what you are able to report?
Why ask it
Cuts to staffing affect coverage in concrete ways: fewer people at council meetings, no time for stories that take months, more reliance on what is easy to check. Reporters usually name specific losses rather than speaking abstractly.
What happens to you after a story attracts a lot of hostility?
Why ask it
Ask because the support available varies enormously, from a legal team and security guidance to nothing at all. It is the part of the job least visible from outside and increasingly the part that drives people out of it.
Is there a story you reported that never ran?
Why ask it
The reasons are revealing: it fell apart, a source withdrew, lawyers stopped it, or an editor decided it was not worth the trouble. Expect some limits on what they can say, and take the outline rather than pushing for names.
What did you misunderstand about this job before you started?
Why ask it
Invites a real answer rather than advice. Common ones are how little of the work is writing, how much is administrative, and how rarely a story changes anything, all of which a student needs to hear early.
If you were starting out now, what would you do differently?
Why ask it
More useful than asking for general career advice, because it forces them to account for how much the entry routes have changed. Be skeptical of answers that only describe the path they happened to take.
What of yours should I read to understand how you work?
Why ask it
A good closing question. The piece they choose is rarely their most read one, and reading it before you follow up gives you a specific reason to be in touch again.
Talking With a Working Journalist
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before and during the conversation
- Read three or four of their recent pieces and mention one specifically. Reporters can tell within a minute whether you have, and it changes how much they give you.
- Ask for twenty minutes and end at twenty. Deadlines are real, and finishing early is the single most reliable way to be granted a second conversation.
- Take the answers as reporting practice rather than opinion. You will learn more from how they verified something than from what they think about it.
- Send one short thank-you note with a concrete next step, such as the piece you read afterward. That is the note that gets remembered.
If a journalist is the one calling you
- Ask what the story is about, what their deadline is, and whether you are being quoted by name before you say anything substantive.
- Settle the terms first. On the record, on background, and off the record are negotiated in advance, not applied retrospectively to something you already said.
- Ask what they already have. It tells you whether the story runs with or without you, which is usually the real decision in front of you.
- You can ask them to read a technical quote back for accuracy. Asking to approve the whole story will usually be declined, and reasonably so.
Common pitfalls
Asking for their personal politics
Most reporters will not answer, and asking signals you see them as a commentator. Questions about how they handle their own views in coverage get you further.
Turning it into a pitch
If you want them to cover something, say so at the start in one sentence and let them decide. Spending the conversation working around to it wastes the part they agreed to.
Asking how to break in, and nothing else
It is the question they are asked most and can answer least usefully. Ask about their own decisions and the practical advice tends to arrive on its own.
Pressing for names they have protected
Source protection is not coyness. Pushing after a first refusal ends the useful part of the conversation.