Video recording, resources, and tips from the CASW Connector Chat on Wednesday, October 9, 2024

When it comes to finding story ideas, Usha Lee McFarling has a simple tip: “Have your curiosity hat on,” she says. In 2020, for example, McFarling noticed many Filipino names among lists of health care workers across the nation who had died from COVID. She started calling Filipino American nurses and investigating the trends, work that turned into a story on the disproportionate toll COVID took on Filipino American health care workers. “It just came from noticing something,” McFarling says. “If you think something is interesting, other people will too.”

McFarling, national science correspondent for STAT, was the featured guest at an October 9 Connector Chat. She has won numerous awards throughout her career, including being part of a team that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism. Most recently, McFarling was named the recipient of the 2024 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting.

Facilitating the conversation was Steve Padilla, writing coach and Column One editor at the Los Angeles Times. The discussion covered elements of great storytelling, how to blend narrative and science, and much more, using a few of McFarling’s award-winning stories as examples.

Below you’ll find a recording of the Chat, links to a selection of McFarling’s articles at STAT and at the LA Times, links to books and authors mentioned during the Chat, and links to talks and articles focused on Padilla’s advice for great writing.

Last but not least: McFarling graciously arranged a special treat for Chat registrants and Connector readers: a discount code for 75 percent off (!!) an annual subscription to STAT! Visit https://www.statnews.com/subscribe/ and enter the code USHA to receive the discount. 

To make sure you know about future Chats, as well as new science writing resources and upcoming events listed on the Connector website, sign up for our newsletter.

Finding characters for your story:

  • Be careful about stopping after the first person you talk to. Sometimes you need to go further. 
  • Webinars can be good ways to find future sources and hear them tell their stories before you interview them.
  • Do a pre-interview or have a more casual conversation before getting into the interview itself. Then when you meet in person, you’ve already established a relationship and you can spend your time observing the person. Look for little details that can offer “showing, not telling.”
  • For example, for a profile of health equity researcher Rachel Hardeman, McFarling interviewed her four or five times. 
  • Vetting sources ahead of time can prevent interviewing too many people and then having to leave some people out. 

On gaining trust with sources:

  • Get someone who knows and trusts you to make the introduction to a new source in a sensitive situation, such as someone with a particular medical condition or who has been harmed. 
  • If someone hasn’t done an interview before or isn’t familiar with the media, make sure they really understand the process.
  • Sometimes sending prior stories you’ve done on your beat can help to build trust.
  • Don’t push it too much if someone isn’t interested.
  • “Just let people talk,” McFarling says. “People want to share their stories.”

Writing about health inequity: 

  • McFarling always assumes people haven’t read her work or read about health inequity in general.
  • There are certain foundational studies and statistics she usually references to give crucial evidence for people unfamiliar with the topic.
  • You need to tell people’s stories to get readers to care about the numbers, but you also need numbers so that people don’t dismiss a story as an individual anecdote. For example, for a story on Black residents leaving medical training at higher rates than white residents, McFarling interviewed eight Black trainees — and had statistics to back up their personal stories. 

On quotes:

  • “Quotes are the beating heart of a story,” McFarling says. She puts the best quotes from her reporting into a doc and writes her story around them. 
  • Be ruthless with quotes. Try to trim, paraphrase, and condense rather than using a long quote. 
  • Make sure the sentence leading into the quote doesn’t just restate the quote. 
  • When interviewing, listen for jargon, and ask people to explain something in a different way, both for your own understanding and for a potential quote in the story. 

On writing:

  • Writing with authority comes from deep, extensive research over time — reading history, talking to many experts. When you’ve got a stable base of reporting, you don’t need the  “according to experts” that is often found in science journalism. 
  • At the same time, do cite and attribute if you don’t feel confident or don’t know the topic extremely well.
  • Anecdotal ledes go in and out of style. Padilla’s tip: Don’t use them — unless you have the perfect anecdote that captures what your story is about.
  • If you’re going to describe a scene, the description should be snappy, foreshadow something later on, and always be in service of the story. 
  • Sometimes McFarling will figure out the end of a story while reporting. This can be helpful because it gives you a target or endpoint in sight for the rest of the writing process.
  • Use short sentences (even just 3 to 7 words) to make an important point.
  • Don’t be afraid to go back and do more reporting once you start writing if you find there are details you didn’t get.
  • Writing during the reporting process can help you decide what you still need and prevent over-reporting that might make the writing more difficult.
  • Narrative elements aren’t just for longform stories; there are ways to get them into quick turnaround stories too. Think about strong language and strong verbs that can help make descriptions more evocative. Keep quotes short. Add history and context.
  • Read your story draft aloud to listen for repetition and clunky sentences. 

Selected list of McFarling’s articles: 

STAT:

LA Times:

Pulitzer citation: The 2007 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting: Kenneth R. Weiss, Usha Lee McFarling, and Rick Loomis of Los Angeles Times 

Favorite resources on craft of writing / storytelling / reporting:

McFarling recommends reading articles by her STAT colleague Helen Branswell and the late Sharon Begley. Also on her list:

Some of Padilla’s recommendations:

Articles/videos of Steve’s writing tips: