Questions are KEY: Reflecting on Journalism

Questions are key to good reporting and storytelling. This is true for at least two reasons: good questions  initiate stores and they drive the rest.

Questions Initiate Stories

The key behind every good news story is thinking of and asking questions. Reporters don't have to know everything, they just need be curious and ask questions whose answers might be interesting for viewers. In everyday situations, hundreds of questions come into our mind. Good journalists write these down and use them as a story ideas. Some examples might be: Who cleans up after a parade? When it snows and the streets are horrible, how do snow-plow drivers make it in to work? What happens at the city council meeting and why should people care? Good questions are key to finding great stories.

Questions Keep Attention 

Leslie Stahl

In addition to being the source of story ideas, questions can move a story forward by teaching and entertaining. I recently watched an episode of 60 minutes about Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, and a new movie The Social Network hosted/reported by Leslie Stahl. The topic has been in the news a lot lately because of the recent movie about the creation of facebook.com. Beyond being an interesting topic, one thing that really sells the story are the questions and the answers they provoke. Answers provide viewers with knowledge and dialog. Both inform and entertain which is the goal of television news.

Some hard questions Stahle asks are: how many people use facebook on a mobile device? Will email become obsolete? Are you trying to turn everything on the web into a social function? Can you feel the tectonic plates shift from google to facebook? Is the goal to own the whole internet? How would you grade yourself as CEO of Facebook? These are a few examples of some of the good questions that Stahle askes the people she interviews.

She addresses issues people want to know about. She uses play on words to make the questions entertaining. In addition to the hard pressing questions, she askes lighter, fun ones as well. For example: was it hard to watch the movie? How did you actually find out he was working on a different project? Why are you pounding away at this when you already have so much money? Are you (the Winklevoss twins) on facebook? Do you feel any remorse for the twins? Do you ever pinch yourself to see if this is real?

The truth is, good questions are key to great storytelling.

I have posted the videos below, in case you too would like to watch the episode of 60 minutes.

Part one:


Part two: