Pulitzer winner Lane DeGregory on the power of local storytelling

 When my boys graduated and left home and I was empty nesting, I was like, ”Well, I can go anywhere I want. What do I want to do?“ And I couldn't imagine starting over sourcing in the community. I've never had a beat here; I've always been kind of like general assignment. 

But I know somebody, in any institution, on any topic that you throw at me. I know somebody who knows somebody who can get me somebody, and that took 20, 25 years. It's nice to feel like I understand the place, where I am, and the people who I need to reach out to.

I love the Tampa Bay Times and, as you know, the industry has changed so much. And my job has changed too, but I get up in the morning, and I'm so excited about doing this every single day.

 I think storytelling is storytelling, right? Whether you're doing a press release or you're doing PR for Procter & Gamble, or you're writing a novel or writing a song, I think that the elements of storytelling are still universal. 

I think when people start, a lot of journalists don't think about their stories as stories. They think about it as providing information. So even the idea of, “Let me tell you a story” is not forefront in a lot of especially young news reporters' minds. It wasn't for me. It's a habit and a mindset to sort of go, “What kind of story can I tell with this information?” A news story, you're reporting on an event; a narrative story, you want people to kind of follow you along and see what happens.

 If I've written a bunch of really sad, meaty, important, weighty stories, then I go, “Can I go cover the State Fair?” You know, volunteer to go do something fun or happy. I wrote a story during the pandemic, one of my dumbest but funnest stories ever, about a clown, because I just wanted somebody to make me laugh when we were all reporting from our little home screens.

And so this clown, he couldn't go clowning at kids' birthday parties, so he was doing it virtually and you could Zoom with the clown for your kid's birthday party. And I got to watch him do this 9-year-old little girl's birthday party, and he kept bringing a rubber chicken in like over the top of the screen and up the bottom in their face. And it was hilarious.

It was like, probably 700-800 words at the most, but it made me laugh and I think it made some readers laugh. 

 I have a problem with, I either want to go really big, really deep — really long projects — or like spend a day, dive in, and get out of it. I have a short-range problem. I can't find those one-week, one-month-type stories — [and] that basically is what they want for Sundays now.

I think we're always waiting for the perfect story, and it's kind of like waiting for the perfect time to have a kid. It never happens. It never comes the way you really want it to, so I think being willing to take some [stories] that aren't necessarily exactly what you want to do, and figuring out what's the best thing you can do with that story.

Maria Carrillo, my old editor, used to ask: “What's the maximum story and what's the minimum story? What can you do if I turn you loose for a day? What can you do if I gave you six months?” I think a lot of times, you don't know that until you start reporting. You don't know that until you start trying to get your sources to let you in, or figure out what scenes you can cover. I usually ask at the beginning, “What's at stake?’ So that I know if there's a deadline for this person in the story, then maybe I can give myself that: ‘I'll hang out with you until that thing happens.”