Finding case studies for your articles
Photo: © Vladimir Mucibabic Dreamstime.com
“How do you find case studies for your stories?”
If I had a Mars Bar every time I heard that question, my chin rolls would be bigger than Homer's.
The best way to answer this question is to perhaps walk you through a yarn I was working on this week.
It was a feature article on doctors whose practices had all but been destroyed by the recent floods, and Cyclone Yasi, in Queensland and Victoria.
Not only did I have to find individual doctors who had been affected, I had to get expert advice on what all doctors could do in the future to prepare their businesses in the event of a major catastrophe.
Now, here’s the thing, I am based in Sydney - at least 1000 clicks from each of the doctors I wanted to track down.
So, how did I go about finding a bunch of doctors whose businesses, and possibly their homes, had been destroyed and entice them to spend precious time chatting to me about their heartache while the sludge slowly receded around their ankles?
Good planning!
It’s all it takes.
Step 1:
Firstly, I worked out how many doctors I would need to interview to get a balanced and broad viewpoint for the article.
I figured with floods in Victoria and Queensland, and Cyclone Yasi menacing Northern Queensland, I would need three docs – one from each area – to give a recount of their experiences.
But I also felt it would be worthwhile speaking to a doctor who had previously been through a catastrophic event to ask how they had got through it and – more importantly – how they got back on their feet.
I tinkered around on the internet and flicked through the week’s editions of the metropolitan newspapers to find those towns and suburbs hardest hit.
Like a dart to a board, I zeroed in on these regions and then clicked onto the Yellow Pages site to find the one or two doctors working in and around those areas.
I came up with two of my doctors that way.
Step 2:
To find my third doc, I went back to the newspapers again, this time looking for those articles in which local journalists had already spoken to many affected people, including – you guessed it - doctors.
It was in a metropolitan daily that I found an article that mentioned a doctor, and it was he who would become my third interviewee.
It was also from previous articles that I found the name and location of a doctor whose business and home had been destroyed by fire two years ago.
Again, it was then a simple case of going back to the Yellow Pages to find their business numbers.
Step 3:
Before I started phoning though - because, remember, I was still planning here – I thought about who else in the medical community could give me information on how doctors can prepare for, and recover from, a disastrous event.
This is where having a niche in which you write really helps. Because I specialise in writing about health and writing for medical markets, I knew the local health care organisations that had doctors as their members.
If I hadn’t had that inside knowledge though, I could have found the same organisations by going through back issues or online versions of health publications written for doctors; I could have been cheeky and called a doctor's surgery and asked which group represented their doctors; or I could have even conducted a good old-fashioned internet search.
For example, if I were looking for an organisation that represented accountants, I would have searched for ‘accountant’ + ‘association’ + ‘au’. (For the record, CPA Australia and the National Institute of Accountants come up in the number one and two spots when you punch in that search criteria.)
Step 4:
The final step, once you know who you want to interview, is getting them to speak to you.
Chances are you have found their phone number or email address in your search, so my advice is to simply call, or write, and tell them who you are and what you want from them.
But - and this is the critical part - how you conduct yourself on the phone is vital in getting them to agree to speak to you.
Here’s what I do when I get any potential interviewee on the phone:
• I am extremely polite and ask them immediately if this is an okay time to talk.
• I am very succinct when I am telling them why I am calling. You won’t instil confidence or trust in them if you waffle. I tell them which publication I am writing for and give them a quick summary of the sorts of things I will be asking them.
• In every single instance, I let them know that I realise their time is precious and that I am very, very grateful if they are prepared to talk to me. Remember, they are doing you a favour! It is their prerogative if they speak to you or not. Never, ever think of yourself or your job as so important that they should feel privileged to speak to you.
• Give them plenty of time if they want to chat, empathise with them if they are pouring their heart out to you and never make judgmental comments.
At the end of the day, who you interview is going to depend entirely on the story you are writing and the publication you are writing for.
But here is a quick guide as to some of the main places where you can find potential interviewees:
• Ask your friends and colleagues. They can make good case studies themselves, or put you in touch with someone who could be.
• Contact public relations companies that work in the field which you are writing about. i.e. a PR company that does the media for a well-known cosmetic surgery company may be able to find you a woman who has had 20 facelifts.
• Read online and print articles on similar topics to get ideas and names of individuals, experts and representative groups.
• Do internet searches for associations or representative and advocate groups. i.e. a story on heart disease would no doubt benefit from a call to the Heart Foundation of Australia. These groups can provide you with all the facts and often a case study or two too.
• Go back to people and contacts you have interviewed before.
In my next blog post, read the stories of some of those people who continue to feel the impact of the January floods - and may do for months or even years to come.
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For more information about Pamela Wilson or WriteSmart, log on to http://www.writesmart.com.au/