Lessons Behind Pulitzer and Magnetar

I was lucky enough to join propublica.org in the second week of April, this week in particular witnessed 2 important events in the history of this nonprofit organization.

The first event was publishing of the Magnetar story under the title “The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going”, this financial story which was produced after cooperation with NPR radio helped Propublica to get thousands of hits, it revealed some harmful practices by hedge funds just 10 days before the Goldman Sachs scandal, the story made record numbers of clicks on the website.

The second event was winning the Pulitzer Prize by Sheri Fink for her story “Deadly Choices at Memorial”.

These 2 events really affected me in my first week in Propublica, first of all I had the chance to read a draft of the final story before it was edited many times.

It was clear for me how the editor wanted the story to be focusing on facts and empty from opinions and how it was important to use certain words in the text to avoid accusing the hedge fund with wrong doing which might cause legal problems.
The first lesson I learned 2 days after publishing the story was how to prepare a follow up story for a big one with several feedback.

I was fortunate enough to attend the follow up meeting .. I didn’t participate in this meeting by expressing my opinions, however I preferred to concentrate and watch how the editor in cheif and the managing editor are acting and what kind of discussions they had with Eric Umansky the story editor and Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein the reporters who wrote the story.

I admired the chief editor attitude, he doesn’t speak a lot, he watches the whole meeting and he commented 3 times only, every comment was adding to the conversation new aspect, he didn’t give orders, he asked questions as “can we do so? or can we check that” or comments like “ usually this happens” and “are you readyto deal with that”, a very successful approach to add to the conversation while leaving the lead to the managing editor.

One important follow up story was answering the readers’ questions and discussing comments, I was assigned by Amanda Michelle the Editor of Distributed Reporting to collect all the feedback on the story in social media and websites that published the story.

After collecting the feedback which was in the form of questions and comments , the reporters had the chance to write a new story under the title “Your Magnetar Questions, Answered” after using the questions and comments that we collected.

The second lesson I learned in Propublica is the importance of good atmosphere for success.

Happiness and joy were in the newsroom as Fink won her Pulitzer, all editors and reporters gathered for a very short celebration in the center of the newsroom.

I learned that when one journalist won something it is not a personal prize but a great recognition for the newsroom efforts, although other propublicans were finalists in other categories of Pulitzer Fink’s prize were enough to make everyone happy .. I think it is a very important factor for success to make sure all journalists in the newsroom are focusing on their job they should feel secure and there should be no tensions or negative internal competition between reporters and editors to get more published space.

During my work in different printed newspapers in Cairo I always noticed how internal tensions waste energy and distract journalists from doing their job for the sake of the public.

I will remember this lesson to take it back with me to Egypt specially when I have the chance to get managerial role in the newsroom.