This article is part of a series called Backstory where I reveal how feature and in-depth stories were crafted. You can find more with the Backstory tag by searching “Backstory” in the search bar.
The original story was published here:
https://americavotes2020.cusjc.ca/iowa/
Every first semester of journalism grad school ends with production day where everyone scrambles to find a recent event to turn into a hit story. Everyone in my class hated it. But before we did something we all hated, we all did something we liked – or at least something we chose to do.
Previous classes covered provincial or Canadian elections, depending on what was going on that fall. We were given four weeks’ notice ahead of the U.S. presidential election that we would each need to pick a state to report on. I chose Iowa.
I have friends in Iowa, attended a wedding there, and passed through the state on the road twice. Looking back, I’m surprised that I’ve been to five places in the sparsely populated flyover state. I knew a couple of people I could ask for advice on what issues to cover, so I chose it without much thought.
Iowa is big on agriculture, especially soybean and corn. I thought those were good places to start looking at how farmers voted based on agricultural policy. I reached out to all the soybean and corn associations and farmers’ collectives I could find on the first three pages of Google search results and waited for the magic to happen.
Magic happened.
A wonderful communications coordinator from the Iowa Soybean Association offered to put me in touch with several farmers who were happy to identify their political leanings publicly, linked me up with their staff photographer regarding images I need for the story, and provided me with plenty of background information to work with.
It was wonderful. I got all the elements of the story together in no time, which was a great help for an absolute beginner. I then spent two weeks polishing the story, checking up on facts, and making sure that it was framed in a way that reflected reality.
