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Knowing the industry’s nitty-gritty news items lets NRN keep big picture in focus

Knowing the industry’s nitty-gritty news items lets NRN keep big picture in focus

Out of the blue, I received a phone call recently from a source with a truly hot tip. He called himself “Deep Throat.” Really, don’t laugh. The story wasn’t about a diabolical presidential plot or anything similar, but when you are a journalist, the term “hot tip” gets the adrenaline going.

Indeed, for most journalists, getting such a tip is akin to winning the lotto, hitting oil, striking gold. Maybe I exaggerate, but hot tips enthuse us like few other tools of the trade. So this tip, still a story in the making, got my heart racing.

What we do at Nation’s Restaurant News, however, is only partly about hot, breaking news. We also crave news that might seem more mundane, but is no less important to us and no less informative to our readers. The lifeblood of journalism is information. Fortunately, our sources keep us plied with enough information to fill 10 publications a week.

Unfortunately, this is why it is nearly impossible for us write about every story we hear about, and sometimes timing is everything. Our job as editors at NRN is to deliver and explain the most up-to-date, salient information we can on events and trends occurring within the industry or influencing it.

Because NRN’s reporters write for both our print and online products, our time is limited and we must be judicious in the stories we choose to cover. The news we deliver must resonate with readers and it must be relevant.

While NRN’s editorial structure is in some ways a reflection of the lean corporate times we live in, the double duty actually provides us an opportunity, maybe even a silver lining: It allows us to get to know our sources better than we might otherwise be able to, and those insights inevitably come in handy for future stories.

When we write short briefs for NRN.com about earnings, new dishes or new executives, we are learning more about the companies we cover and the circumstances affecting those companies. That knowledge then can be used to lend perspective to in-depth stories and special reports for our print product. Call it holistic coverage.

As editors at NRN, our relationships with our sources aren’t just about one story. We know events don’t occur in a vacuum, but evolve over time, have future ramifications and affect breathing human beings. We always want to know all there is to know and meet as many sources as possible.

Still, for want of time, sometimes it is hard to get to every phone call or e-mail. Nonetheless, we are interested, so keep the news coming—whether through a straightforward press release or an anonymous call. We use it all in one way or another, because it’s in our blood to put what happens in the restaurant industry into context, and sometimes to hit you with a story culled from an unexpected hot tip.

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