Want to elevate your story? No better way than asking why

I think the most difficult question reporters seek to answer is also the most important one. Every kid learns to answer the five Ws in middle school, four of which are general stock of every local news story.

Sometimes it’s an interesting exercise to figure out which Ws are the most important. Sometimes it’s easy — a car crash is a story about what, where and when. Sites like TMZ rely solely on who. Stories about New Year’s Eve babies are all about the when.

More often than not, the question of why falls through the cracks.

Sometimes it should. Why was that baby born on New Years’? Because her parents got frisky sometime in March. Not an important piece of the story.

Why did Iggy Azalea/Justin Bieber/John Travolta/Billy Joel get into that argument/fight/lawsuit/car crash/whatever? Probably because he/she was drunk.

But more often than not, the why gets short shrift.

If a reporter wants to elevate their work, the first step should be to ask why whatever happened happened, and seek to explain that within the reportage. Why is the politician being indicted? That’s an easy one, and the answer goes into the lede.

“Why did the cars crash” may be more difficult to answer, and may require comment from the police or witnesses.

It gets harder on enterprise pieces — there may be no news peg — but that is often why enterprise articles feel untethered. Why are we writing this story? “Because we had the information and want to do something with it,” is not a good enough answer.

Take, for example, a story about the most accident prone roads in the area. You have a neat visualization, a map and a hunk of data to inform it all. Where is taken care of. What and When are obvious, but Why is more elusive.

Why are there so many accidents in those particular spots? If the answer is, “Because there are too many cars on the road,” all of a sudden your story may be about the growth in the use of cars, not which intersections may be the most dangerous.

At worst, your “why” has just muddied the story with context. But without a passing glance at “why” these roads are in such bad shape the story remains dry and technical — sharing numbers and stats like they mean something on their own.

So, the why of things can be challenging, but if the goal is to elevate a story there is no better way than to ask yourself “why.”