Media Bistro interviewed The New Yorker's long-time media reporter Ken Auletta about how he practices his craft. Sounds like he and Merlin Mann should hang out. From the interview:
How do you take notes, stay organized? What's your system for getting such detail in your pieces and keeping them all organized?
With some merit, my wife calls me anal. I create three digital files: a) what I call an index of all the materials I collect; b) a file of people I wish to interview or things I need to read; c) a file of questions to be asked of each person to be interviewed. Of these files, the most vital for me is the index. For a long piece, the index can run to fifty single-spaced pages, and consists of a cross-reference system of each interview or document.I number each notebook and document, and make a headline in the index of what someone said that I might want to use, followed by, say (A, p.30), which to me means notebook A and page 30 of the pages I have numbered; documents get numbers (10, p.64); and books get Roman numerals (IV, p290). I break it into subjects – possible Leads, Chronology, Bio, Observations, Themes, etc. – and place each entry in these categories.
I try to index as I am reporting because it is so tedious, yet is so important that I don't want to have it back up and then possibly race over this process out of boredom. As I'm indexing I see that people are mentioned I should interview, that anecdotes or facts are relayed that I should confirm with others. I skip to the questions to be asked document and type in questions, and to the people to see document and add names.
At the end of the reporting, I take several days to study the index, which I hope helps me climb above the trees. Then I move it around on my screen like a deck of cards and slowly organize a narrative. I write off the index and place a checkmark next to each headline, allowing me to see, when the first draft is finished, what left out and included.
Link (Thanks, Gil Kaufman!)
