‘The true pulse’: Finding small stories that help tell the big ones
Gathering “vox pop” is a standard practice for journalists seeking to round out a story with street-level perspectives. But authentic views can stay buried in an echo chamber age. Our political reporter explains how she teases them out.
At the heart of every news story – even the ones about politics and policies that can seem faceless and opaque – are people whose lives are affected by both the debates and the outcomes. Their views matter.
“I really make it … a requirement of pretty much all my stories [reported in the field] that I need to get some reporting just from average voters who live in the place,” says Story Hinckley, the Monitor’s national political correspondent.
But how to find a representative range? And how to probe for a level of authenticity in an age of pat position-taking and cut-and-paste tweets on everything from the “real” cause of high gasoline prices to the “right” response to a Chinese spy balloon?
“The power of the echo chamber never really ceases to amaze me,” Story says on the Monitor’s “Why We Wrote This” podcast. “I will hear almost verbatim the same phrases and catchphrases.”
That means being on the ground connecting – and challenging – without being confrontational. All in the service of her storytelling.
“My job is to get a full, accurate, fair understanding of what [people are] saying,” Story says, “to … help my readers understand where people are.”
Episode transcript
Clay Collins: Welcome to “Why We Wrote This.” I’m this week’s host, Clay Collins. Vox pop. Vox Populi. “The voice of the people.” Gathering examples is a standard tool in journalism. It’s about collecting many perspectives to tell a richer, more relatable story. Like all good journalists, the Monitor’s national political correspondent, Story Hinckley, is someone who can walk up to anyone, establish her credentials and ask away. She joins us today to have some questions fired at her. Welcome, Story.
Story Hinckley: Hello!
Collins: So vox pop isn’t part of every story that you write. What goes into deciding that in order to tell a particular story well, you need to report the views of individuals who are in one way or another, stakeholders in the story.
Hinckley: So I think it depends on what the story is, right? I was recently in Washington, D.C., at the Capitol covering the speakership race in the U.S. House of Representatives. So that’s an example of a story [for which] I really needed to talk to congressmen and political analysts. But especially when the Monitor sends me out into the country to do reporting, I really make it almost a requirement of pretty much all my stories that I need to get some reporting just from average voters who live in the place. If I see stories as being able to translate the true pulse of a place [then] I’ve got to know what more than just the politicians and other bigwigs are thinking.
Collins: When you’re gathering different perspectives, how do you know when you have enough representation of different sides and that they’re equally well articulated?
Hinckley: I mean, obviously at the Monitor, that is something we take really seriously. And I don’t think that being fair in a story necessarily means the story is divided 50/50 between two opposing viewpoints. I think you need to always keep in mind what the point of the story is and give more of a share to answering that.
Collins: Right and not falling into, you know, what’s sometimes called “bothsidesism.” You wrote recently about the challenge of covering campaigns in particular. How do you go about earning trust, especially at a time when the media has been painted as, you know, suspect at best?
Hinckley: So I recently wrote about that story because I was in Pennsylvania covering the gubernatorial election there. And, you know, I’m used to reporters getting put into pens and and really regulated at a lot of political events. But at the event for this Republican candidate, I mean, there was security that followed me to the bathroom. I mean, it was really crazy. And so I wrote about how as people distrust the media more and more, it simultaneously makes it more difficult for reporters to do their job, to get good vox pop. So, you know, I wasn’t able to walk through the crowds at this candidate’s event and ask people, “Why do you like him?” You know, I wasn’t able to do that because they kept us in this back little box. So, and that adds real value to stories, I think. But to answer your question, I think that a good interview … the person has to trust you, right? Because they’re talking to you about their political beliefs, which can be really personal. But I think that it’s really helpful for me when I’m on the ground in a place because looking people in the eye and having a conversation with them face to face really, makes them see that you’re a real person and really make it clear that what I want to have is a conversation and I want them to be free to tell me whatever they’re thinking, positive or negative.
Collins: The act of just rolling up on someone you don’t know and talking to them, I remember from my reporting days, and it’s sometimes just kind of ... awkward.
Hinckley: When young reporters, reporters new to the Monitor asked me, you know, “how exactly do you get yourself to do that? That seems so scary.” I always tell them the story that when I was an intern at the Monitor, I had reached a point where I was like, OK, look, I got to go get some real interviews for my first real on-the-ground reported story that was in Boston. I went out on the sidewalk and I just walked through the whole city of Boston for almost two hours. You know, I passed hundreds, thousands of people [and] didn’t get the courage to, like, go up to one of them. You know, some days it’s really easy and then some days it feels harder. When you’re at, it’s easier when you’re at a political event, you know, like a rally or a campaign event, because the people that are there are kind of in the mindset of politics. The harder one is when I, let’s say, I’m doing a profile on a congressman and I need to go to his home district and really see why people support him or don’t support him. So I’m in a place in a small city in America where I’ve never been and just walking around and interrupting people’s really lovely Sunday brunches, just trying to, “Excuse me, do you like Congressman...” And most of the time they don’t even know who I’m talking about. And most of the time I’m really pleasantly surprised by how many people will talk to me. But that doesn’t mean that it’s always pleasant.
Collins: And the best quotes, I mean, especially on politics, the best quotes are obviously people presenting views that they’ve formed based on their lived experience. In October, you wrote about Latino voters describing a shift in thought that they had had. But these days, opinions so often come pre-formed, and the trap in the echo chamber era is you hear a lot of echoes. So how do you get past that and get to a deeper layer?
Hinckley: The power of the echo chamber never really ceases to amaze me. You know, I’ll be in south Texas working on a story about how Republicans are seeing more and more support among Hispanic voters. And I will hear almost verbatim the same phrases and catch phrases that I hear among white working class Republicans in central Pennsylvania. So to really get beyond that, I think you have to spend time with the people because, you know, for example, they’ll say, “I like Donald Trump because he ran this country like a business.” Right? You hear that from Republicans across the country. But I spend more time with them and I say, “OK, how do you think he did that? And did you see things improve economically for yourself when he was president? If yes, OK, then what did that look like for you?” So that’s where it gets interesting. And I think I’ve learned over my years doing this that in terms of vox pop, most of the time quality is much better than quantity. You’ve really got to keep digging in one person’s mind. And I’m not a pollster, right? Pollsters survey large groups of people. That’s not what we do. As a reporter. I have to really try to understand better, OK, you think this – but why?
Collins: That approach that you just described, It sounds as though that’s a way of challenging someone’s conviction about their views, you know, maybe even adding better information without, you know, challenging the view holder personally. And that seems like it’s an element of respect on your part.
Hinckley: In my opinion, as a reporter, my job isn’t to change interviewees minds. My job is to get a full, accurate, fair understanding of what they’re saying to knit into this larger narrative and picture to help my readers understand where people are at. And try to find ways to frame when I am pushing back, to frame it in a way that’s not confrontational but still can try to highlight how other Americans are seeing the issue.
Collins: Hmm. So you work in the service of readers. Do you think the right blend of good vox pop, the “quality over quantity,” as you described it, can help readers see and consider other perspectives better and maybe even improve the quality of national discourse
Hinckley: Yes, definitely. I mean, I kind of think of it as you’re putting a face to a policy or a face to a number. So, for example, the story that we were talking about earlier with Hispanic voters in south Texas, you can read and understand all the numbers, but to really understand the why, why is it happening, you have to be there and talk to the voters. What people remember, I think, in stories are people. People like reading about people. And so that’s what I think drives a story to make it readable, but then also make it memorable.
Collins: Well, thank you so much, Story, for taking some time to talk about how you do your work.
Hinckley: Sure!
Collins: Thanks for listening. For a transcript of this interview in our show notes, which include links to some of Story’s work, go to CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode was hosted by me, Clay Collins, and produced by Samantha Laine Perfas. Jeff Turton and Alyssa Britton were our sound engineers, with original music by Noel Flatt, produced by the Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2023.
