Top Tips: How to cover an event without putting people to sleep

Not everyone can attend big events like COP29 or protests in big cities. The job of the journalist is to be there for those who can’t. 

In News Decoder’s Top Tips, we share advice for young people from experts in journalism, media literacy and education. In this week’s Top Tip, we give you strategies for writing articles about events. You can find more of our learning resources here. And learn how you can incorporate our resources and services into your classroom or educational program or by forming a News Decoder Club in your school.

For the past two weeks some 400 journalists have been in Baku, Azerbaijan covering COP29, the United Nations’ world gathering on climate change. It is one of the great events for a journalist to cover.

In many ways, events are challenging assignments for reporters.

The website for the conference lists more than 1,400 events, and that doesn’t include the unofficial events organizations are holding in conjunction with the conference.

If you were to file one article what would you cover?

Here’s the thing. People don’t care about events that aren’t sports matches. They certainly don’t care about conferences. So your story can’t be about the conference. If you try doing that you’ll just put people to sleep.

Why cover events in the first place?

Journalists attend conferences and other events so readers don’t have to. What readers or listeners want to know is something super interesting or important that happened.

So when you go to a conference to cover it, or to any type of event, that’s what you look for: something or someone super interesting. But how do you find it? To find out we spoke to the journalists on News Decoder’s team to find out how they cover events.

Marcy Burstiner is the educational news director for News Decoder but before that covered many events as a reporter for half a dozen different newsrooms. She said that when she goes to an event she is looking for a good story to tell. She said that one time she was assigned to cover a famous golf tournament, but her job wasn’t to write about the competition. The sportswriters were there for that, and her job was to write colorful feature stories about the event itself.

“I found an old guy on top of a tall ladder whose job it was to keep the score — this was before the Internet and with hundreds of players across 18 holes over several days, this was actually a challenging job,” Burstiner said. “He told me that he invented the ‘leaderboard’ and that the idea came to him one day as an epiphany.”

Amina McCauley is the program manager for News Decoder’s EYES Project, which is creating a curriculum for teaching climate change. As a journalist she follows a similar strategy as Burstiner for covering events. She finds the most interesting person at the event and asks them to tell her their story.

“Maybe it’s someone who has held a speech, maybe it’s someone wearing an interesting costume or maybe it’s someone who looks out of place,” she said. “Ask them why they’re there, why this particular event is important to them and what about this topic keeps them awake at night.”

Bring the event to life.

Andrea Knezevic is the communications specialist for News Decoder’s WePod project to create a European community of podcasters. As a reporter covering events she focuses on moments that bring the event to life — like when a speaker grabs everyone’s attention, there is a strong reaction from the crowd or there is a shift in the mood.

“These moments help me tell the real story and make readers feel like they were there,” Knezevic said.

Sabīne Bērziņa is the user experience manager for News Decoder’s ProMS Project which is developing a publishing platform that teaches young people journalism skills. She emphasized that preparation is essential when covering an event.

Learn about the speakers or ask the organizers for a list, Bērziņa said. Read about their background. Think about which attendees might be best placed to provide the context you need. If it’s a very large event, try to prearrange some interviews. Read about the events that have happened in the previous years if you’re attending an annual conference, a festival or similar. Use all of that to write down some bits with background information you can easily copy and paste.

“Some events can get crowded, busy and noisy and you will feel much more comfortable if you have prepared some information in advance so that you can quickly fill in an article draft with details and quotes before your deadline sneaks up on you,” she said.

Talk to people.

Burstiner said the best stories at a conference or a rally or a protest aren’t from the speeches but from the interviews you conduct with people who are attending. “Why are they there?” she said. “What do they care about? What would they like to happen?”

In a video for News Decoder produced in partnership with Mobile Stories, News Decoder correspondent Norma Hilton said she finds that you can meet people at events who can become valuable sources for future stories.

Hilton offers three pieces of advice. First, bring a notepad to take down quotes and names and contact information and a device you can record on, but make sure you always ask for permission before recording someone. Second, Hilton said, is take pictures and videos. “This will be useful for the social media team at your organization,” she said. “Always remember to shoot in horizontals so they have more leeway with editing.”

Third, Hilton said, don’t be shy. Approach people and explain your goals. And lastly, as Bērziņa also advised, do your research. “Find out who is involved, why people are there.”

You can hear more advice from Norma Hilton about covering events in the video below.

Questions to consider:

1. Why might an event be challenging for a reporter to cover?
2. What is one strategy in the article for covering an event?
3. What types of events would you like to attend and how might you cover it as a journalist?