Jim VandeHei's memo: How to be a great reporter

Why it matters: So many reporters seem content to just be a reporter, like an academic, or chronicler, or fan in the stands. They settle and even celebrate mediocrity.

Greatness is breaking news, beating others, holding people to account, dominating a beat, truly mastering a topic or space, writing confidently, crisply and clearly.

• It's learning to tease out information others can't, dig into documents others don't know exist, see patterns, understand motivations, and tell the story first and with punch.
• It's studying and learning from the greats. It's really no different than being a great athlete or musician — every story about Springsteen or Jordan starts with their will to be the very best and outworking others to do it.

You need to do a gut check before trying to pull this off, at least at Axios, where the bar is high and real. This is where most publications blow it, us included. Great reporters are born with many or all of these characteristics:

• Thick skin, innate or grown: If you are focused on pleasing others or keeping the peace, do something else with your life. Be a nurse or teacher or referee. You need to not care what others think of you, or this pressure will crush your fearlessness and drive to win.
• Fearlessness: This is related to — but different than — thin skin. If you are naturally cautious and fear being questioned, this profession will not work for you. Fearlessness is not recklessness. Some of the best reporters are neurotic and prone to second-guessing. But in the end, they push through because they know they sought and found truth.
• Curious mind: A great reporter constantly pursues what's new, what's next, what's really happening. You need to feel it in your bones and be deeply, hopelessly unsatisfied until you know fully and confidently. You're the person who is always asking questions and naturally skeptical. If you are at all content or gullible or incurious, please don't do journalism.

• An insatiable desire to win: This is the most important attribute: you cannot be the very best if you do not hunger badly for it. You will not make the phone calls, do the homework, comb through the documents, or break the news if you are not on fire for mastering your craft.

Notice what's not on here:

• Be a great writer. Almost all journalists are relatively weak writers. If you have the attributes above, we will teach you how to be a writer who can package the goods so everyone realizes how good you are.
• Go to the right Journalism School. There's zero correlation between the school you attended or grades you earned and your ability to be a great journalist. Often it's the opposite. So if you think you are special because you went to Harvard, you're not. If you think this isn't for you because you barely got through community college, think again.

A step-by-step guide to becoming a great reporter:

1. Master your beat. The first thing you should do is map out the most important people, the most important topics, and the most important organizations or groups affected by your beat. Literally. Write this down. You will need to talk to the central figures on your beat and other reporters do this. You need to create in your mind a framework of the essential moving pieces.

• Read, read, read. Figure out the most wired reporters in and around the beat, and read their every word. Any book by people on your beat or about your beat is essential reading, no matter how boring it is. There are nuggets of wisdom about the topics or your sources in all of them.
• Study, study, study. Do the background research and ask the questions to be deep and fluent in your topic. Axios' Sara Fischer keeps spreadsheets of deals in her space as a reference point for her reporting.

2. Master your sources. Jonathan Swan, an Axios original who's now with The New York Times, literally writes down the full list of the important people and all the important people who know the important people and then attacks it, methodically and maniacally. Mike Allen includes even the lowest ranking people in each related office — the assistants, phone-answerers, errand-runners — because one day they'll be running things.

• This takes extraordinary patience and diligence. You need insane persistence — and to earn the trust of people to even call you back. Don't pester to the point of stalking. But come close to that line.
• 99% of your competitors don't put in the work. Out-hustling alone can put you atop your field.

3. Study the greats. Think big and broad about who you want to emulate: Some of the best practitioners are long departed. Read their old work or dig up their game tape. Others are on the field today — study them.

4. Be self- and source-skeptical. Remember that for any story you write, there are people in the room who know what actually happened. If you fire off something shoddy that seems flashy but is wrong or off in an important way, there are people who will know this immediately. They won't keep this to themselves. Everybody who really knows will know.

• Go back to sources again and again and again. Check out every detail. How do they know it's true? Interrogate them. Don't fall for the trap of rushing to print something you think is probably right but don't know for sure. Build a sturdy foundation for every story — even the smallest ones. Good reporting requires extreme patience.

5. Steer clear of groupthink and the group. This is hard, because it's often the pack you see at events or social gatherings, tweet for and tweet about. The group will destroy you. Be friendly but deeply, deeply skeptical.

• Mediocrity loves company and the comfort of doing the same things, the same way, with the same safe results. Others will make you question yourself if you cut your own path and break your own stories. They'll distract you. They'll distort your reality — because they all tend to say and write the same things in the same places.

6. Hate losing. You need to loathe losing on a scoop, or concept, or story idea. Wake up every day with the will to be first with a scoop or a big idea, and never justify getting beat if you could have been first.

• But, but, but: It's better to be beat than wrong — every time. You need to learn to balance your desire to win with editors and gut checks to guard against impulsiveness or recklessness. One bad mistake can kill years of reputation building.

7. Check your ideology at the door. If you want to cheer for one side, pick another path. Politics, perhaps. We all have our biases — just be aware of them and let truth, facts and breaking news guide you. Take the time to understand the views and people who might not share your biases — but also don't overcompensate. You can train your mind to be clinical, not emotional.

8. Be gracious and grateful. This may seem corny, but sources do not need to help you ... editors do not need to elevate you ... and readers do not need to read you. Say thank you, treat others respectfully and be generous. I guarantee you this will make you a better sourced, better read, happier reporter. And the better you get, the more this applies.

9. Master writing for impact. The single biggest and most annoying flaw of reporters is they get the goods and then write the stories timidly, indirectly and ineffectively. Imagine building a Tesla and not caring if anyone drove it or appreciated the astonishing features. That's what most reporters do when they get to the keyboard: they hide the good stuff. Don't.

• You need to train your mind to think clearly and then write crisply. Work on ledes like a model works on his or her abs.
• Obsess about your headlines and social media teases. You did great journalism! Make sure as many people as humanly possible see and know it. Don't leave this to editors alone. If you can craft a punchy headline, it makes writing a punchy lede easier.
• Great journalism, packaged correctly, grabs and informs people — and trumpets to sources you are a force to reckon with.

10. Collaborate smartly. Newsrooms are full of people who know more about adjacent beats than you. So spot the best reporters and collaborate on thinking and stories. Most of the action, after all, is in the collision of beats — tech and consumer habits, business and politics, energy and federal regulation, workplace trends and market dynamics.

The bottom line: Enjoy the ride. If you don't love this sh*t — getting paid to be curious, holding people to account, breaking news and mixing it up — get out. There are much easier and more lucrative paths in life — but few more satisfying or important.

• Let Jim know what you think: [email protected].