How do you become a working journalist in 2020? Lindsay Boyle knows.
Source: TheDay.com
In this interview with professional journalist Lindsay Boyle, you’ll get answers to the following questions:
What does it take to be a working journalist in 2020?
How do we solve the heroin epidemic?
What does the typical day of a professional journalist look like?
What’s the 1 skill you must possess to become a professional journalist?
And a bunch of other cool stuff.
About Lindsay Boyle
Lindsay Boyle started her career in Ghana, Africa, where she covered the soul-crushing topic of child trafficking. After her time in Ghana, Lindsay landed a job with The Day Newspaper, where she covered the opioid epidemic, immigration policy, and law enforcement.
Today you can find Lindsay at Hearst CT, where she is head of reader engagement. And you can also find Lindsay teaching journalism at Quinnipiac University, where she is an adjunct professor.
Who will get the most out of this interview?
Aspiring journalists
Working journalists
Entrepreneurs who want to improve their understanding of storytelling (journalism is storytelling)
Anyone impacted by the opioid/heroin crises
Curious people
Content Marketers who want to tell better stories
Enjoy our interview with Lindsay Boyle
What skills do you need to be a working journalist in 2020?
Lindsay Boyle: I learned how to be a journalist during my four years at Ohio University, but I'm also now teaching journalism to students at Quinnipiac University, and it shocked me because my students feedback so far has been, “Wow, we didn't realize how much went into this.”
Of course, I love to hear that, but I don't think people understand that we focus on the structure of the article. You have to think about what is the most important thing––what is the news here? Why am I writing about this and why is anyone going to care? And then you have to arrange the article in a way that keeps people's attention, works from the top to the bottom in terms of importance.
We check ourselves on the regular in terms of information gathering. I can't just listen to a police scanner and start writing something. I have to make a bunch of phone calls. I have to make sure that I can get the information verified before I publish it somewhere. Data mining––I mean, I know where all kinds of databases are.
We can't just come up here and write what we feel like every day. Today I'm working on a story that involves paid firefighters and unpaid firefighters, volunteers and the Department of Labor and whether you're allowed to be both in one town. So this is going to require me doing a lot of my own research because I don't know the Department of labor laws off the top of my head.
Do journalists’ follow a universal standard?
Lindsay Boyle: You're not going to find a single newspaper where ethics aren't really important. And by that I mean we don't want fraudulent sources. We don't want made-up quotes. We don't want anything like that. Because as a journalist, you severely damage your reputation if it's found that you've inserted a lie or something that's maybe not quite true.
You’ve been covering the heroin epidemic for 3 years now. What have you learned about the heroin epidemic that has surprised you?
Lindsay Boyle: I think I continue to learn new things about it. It surprised me when, for example, a few years ago, the death rates got so high that they surpassed the aids epidemic at its worst and car crashes at their worst. So the sheer volume of this makes it unique.
You have the comparison to the crack epidemic. But again, in terms of just sheer volume, it's killing so many more people. I'm continually surprised.
We try to look and dig deeper each time. This state has very good data. That includes every single drug involved, where they overdosed and where they died, which are not always the same––often not the same.
We tried to dig deeper and find some strange trends. Like a couple of years ago, I noticed women in my age group were the fastest growing in fatal overdoses. That was weird, especially because so much of the conversation at first was about men.
Are we going to look back in 10, 20 years and go, holy crap, the heroin epidemic was a way bigger deal than even the media made it out to be?
Lindsay Boyle: I'm often asked if I think that this epidemic is on its way out. In Connecticut, the two key databases show a leveling off. One was a leveling off of overdose-related hospital visits and the other was a leveling off of overdose-related deaths.
And by a leveling off, I mean just that. I don't mean a major decrease or anything like that. For two years in a row, about a thousand people died in Connecticut, and that's the first time in six years that it hasn't increased.
In 10 years do I think we'll look back and be like, “Why weren't we screaming about this even more?” Definitely. Because here's the thing, we're how many years into this? Like six years into major increases each year.
And the fatigue is real. People are already sick of reading about it. Every once in a while I can still break through with a new story I haven't told before. Like when I had talked about a family who chose to be honest with their son's obituary, that really resonated with people. But if I just write the numbers and I don't put a lot of effort into humanizing it, people are kind of like, are we done talking about this yet?
What is something you’ve learned about heroin addiction that you wish everyone knew?
Lindsay Boyle: A lot of people in my family struggle with addiction. This is the obvious answer, but I just can't overstate how much it is not a choice. Did you choose to try something for the first time? Of course.
But when your brain changes and wants it so much more, that's something that you literally cannot understand unless it's happening to you or has happened to you or has happened to someone very close to you. Maybe even then, a lot of people don't get it. So alcoholism runs in my family on both sides, heavily. And when I have a drink, I don't like to stop. That's something I know about myself. So I’m very careful with it.
I will not touch opioids at all. I never have. I'm never going to. It scares me. And that's because of the coverage I've been doing for three years. But if I did, I think I would have a serious problem. And I'm comfortable saying that. I think most people aren't comfortable saying something like that. It is classified as a brain disease addiction. That's not for no reason. That's a real thing.
If you were given unlimited resources to try and stop the heroin epidemic, what specific actions would you take?
Lindsay Boyle: I'm a big proponent of medication-assisted treatment. For those who don't know, that's the use of a medication that helps reduce the symptoms of withdrawal. In addition to some type of therapy.
I think both elements are important. The medications are like, you know, suboxone, methadone, even Vivitrol. Those medications can help you function. They don't get you high. You can abuse them, don't get me wrong, but if you take them as needed, they wouldn't get you high. They would just stop you from feeling like death, which is what happens when people go into withdrawal.
But on top of that, you would then have to go to therapy at least once a week, sometimes more, to address the underlying reasons that you're using substances.
Do you think Journalism is under attack in America?
Lindsay Boyle: I have to be careful spouting any opinions, and I generally don't. So this isn't an opinion, this is a fact, you can watch it. Just look at Donald Trump's tweets. I wish everyone had the opportunity to stand in the press area of a Trump rally while he encourages his supporters to turn and yell stuff. I've been there, and so have a lot of my colleagues. The man has no respect for journalism.
If you were starting all over again as a journalist, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
Lindsay Boyle: I was at a pretty good school, and I had the opportunity to take web design and some classes involving data visualization and graphics. I had those opportunities. I had those classes at my disposal, but I didn't take them. I was deeply interested in international journalism. So that's where my electives went to. If I had it to do over again, I would've tried to get some more practical skills before I left school.
What do you mean by “practical skills?”
Lindsay Boyle: I am working on a toll story. As part of that, I petitioned the public to give me examples of their commutes. We're thinking, how do we visualize that? And fortunately I have Carlos here, our digital news director, who's working with me on this, but I would love to just be able to do it myself, you know? That's data visualization stuff that I could have taken a class on and learned in school. But I didn’t.
I think that working with data right now is a really big thing. Everyone wants a person who can put these facts behind the story. I do a lot of data reporting but I don't know the programming language which helps you with in-depth analysis. So that's something that would be cool to know.
Name one skill or trait you must possess to be a professional journalist?
Lindsay Boyle: Integrity and drive, this isn't for slouches. We work long hours.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Lindsay Boyle: I start in Hamden around six in the morning. I check our website and make sure that everything looks good. I usually schedule a Facebook post or two, schedule social media for the whole day, go through emails.
I have the word 'editor' in my job title because some of my work is administrative and clerical. I answer some emails if I need to in the morning, go through voicemails we might have missed overnight, that kind of stuff. Fun stuff. Send emails to fellow reporters if it's a story idea that seems like they might cover. Then I try to have all of that done by nine so I can start on whatever story I'm working on.
That's just my morning routine.
I'm usually working on at least three stories at once. I have three that I'm actively working on, including this mammoth toll project.
I'm also the breaking news person, so if a fire comes in, then I have to drop all of this and go to it. So yeah, multitasking is huge. I usually wrap up by like 2:00 PM but a lot of times that doesn't work for people. So I'll take calls from home. I do interviews from home every once in a while.
I'm an adjunct like I said, so that's Monday, Wednesday, Friday 4:00 to 5:00 PM, and this weekend I ran out of time to finish my stories on Friday. So I wrote one of them on Saturday, and I don't mind, you know, I don't mind, but that's journalism.
Should aspiring journalists go to journalism school?
Lindsay Boyle: I still think, yes, I do. I don't think you can get considered without a journalism degree or at least have taken courses in journalism while in college. I wish that wasn't the case.
I do think part of the problem in our industry is that we don't reflect the public we serve. It's hard to justify spending hundreds of thousands on school. Journalists get paid like crap.
And so for that reason, I wish I could say no, don't do it. But the things that I learned, the techniques I learned for gathering information, the connections that I made, the experience that I got with student publications, especially that you get to dig your hands at these publications. Without it, I wouldn't be working professionally in this field.
I'm going to name a person, place or thing, and then I just want you to tell me what comes to mind:
The American Dream?
Lindsay Boyle: Oh Man. Well, what came to mind immediately was this married couple I just wrote about a couple of days ago. They’re 78 and 74 and from the Dominican Republic.
They came here in 1996 as legal permanent residents after their daughter petitioned for them.
They had me dying, just the sweetest, cutest couple. They spend their mornings volunteering at one of the local elementary schools and they just got citizenship a couple of weeks ago.
That to me is the American dream.
LGBT Rights in 2020?
Lindsay Boyle: I think that if Pete Buttigieg continues his run, we're going to see how much animosity toward homosexuals still exists. People like to think that it's something that's in the past, just like they like to think that racial tensions are something that is in the past, which I don't think they think that anymore, but they did when Obama was running. So I think it's not fair to say that everyone's cool with the gays. It’s certainly not true.
New London, Connecticut?
Lindsay Boyle: I love this little place. I have a certain type of city that I like. I love Cleveland, Ohio.
I love Utica, New York, and I love New London, Connecticut. Each is a little bit different, but kind of the same feel–– like this rust belt type of idea where they had a major industry that vanished and kind of left the city a little bit in ruins.
But then this population that's just obsessed with the place rebuilt it and brought it back. And you see, Cleveland is thriving now. I know new London's always trying. So I'm rooting for new London.