DeGregory, French discuss reporter-editor relationship
When Tampa Bay Times reporter Lane DeGregory took on the story of a murdered toddler, she knew the enterprise package would be challenging. Then, the newspaper asked former reporter and editor Kelley Benham French, now a professor of practice, to work with DeGregory on shaping the story.
Both said they were thrilled to be working together again. They had collaborated as fellow reporters during French’s time at the newspaper, and French had served as an editor on DeGregory’s and others’ projects before.
In this video by sophomore Sara Wise, the two talk about the importance of editors in the storytelling process.
A conversation with Lane DeGregory and Kelley Benham French
Lane DeGregory, Journalist, Tampa Bay Times, 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner
I’m Lane DeGregory. I’m an enterprise and features writer at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida, and I’ve been there for about 15 years. I won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009, and Kelley was my editor on my most recent project.
Kelley Benham French, Media School professor of practice, 2013 Pulitzer Prize finalist
I am a professor of practice here for the last couple of years, and before I came to IU, I was an enterprise editor at the Tampa Bay Times, and I worked with Lane since 2004, mostly as a reporting colleague and every now and then as an editor, and we just finished this big project together. It’s called “The Long Fall of Phoebe Jonchuck.”
The video shows the beginning of the story on the Tampa Bay Times website. It’s an interactive story with video, photos and audio.
It was a really tragic story about a 25-year-old man in Tampa, Florida, who dropped his 5-year-old daughter off of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Our story ran a year after her death, and it just kind of exploited like who she was and how this could have happened and what her life was like leading up to this moment.
When I got the call from Jennifer Orsi, Tampa Bay Times managing editor, and she said I, I want you to work with Lane DeGregory, and I was like trying to play cool, you know like tell me more, and really I was like yes, but I was just hoping it wasn’t gonna be some dog of a story. And she says ‘Oh it’s about, you know, Phoebe Jonchuck,’ and I was like ‘yes!’ because this is such an important story that needs to be told and told well and sensitively and with a lot of nuance, and it’s just everything that Lane is great at, so I was super pumped.
The video shows photos of Phoebe Jonchuck and her family.
So I get on the phone with Lane, and she’s like ‘I don’t want to do the story, there’s no hope in the story,’ and I was like ‘Oh God.’
The video shows clips of ABC news reporting on “Justice for Phoebe.”
I very much did not want to do this story. I thought it was kind of hopeless and that it had already been told a bunch of times, so I think getting Kelley was like my present. Like the best gift they could give me was a really great editor and a great friend who could like walk me through this process cause a lot of what I need help with this like you said figuring out what the story is that we’re going to tell, and we went through probably a dozen different ‘what’s the one-word theme?’ ‘what’s, what’s it all about?’
More clips from the news about Phoebe’s death.
You know, we kept going back to it, going, and the more reporting you did, the more it changed. I’ve been reported for 25 years, and I still really, really, really, really need, want and love being edited, and Kelley’s one of the best there is out there. And it gave me all the confidence in the world to know Kelley getting my back and ushering me through this.
Kelley draws a heart in the air toward Lane.
The video shows the credits/byline of the online Tampa Bay Times story called “The Long Fall of Phoebe Jonchuck.”
Produced by Sara L. Wise
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