Bill Nemitz, metro columnist for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram and probably the best-known journalist in Maine, paid a visit to our newsroom Wednesday to talk about his talent for putting "real people" into his columns, for writing about issues through the eyes of those most affected.

Bill said journalists spend too much time writing about process and quoting only officials. Rather than offer my "take-aways" from his talk, I asked Joel Elliott, a young reporter at the Morning Sentinel, to provide his. Here's what Joel had to say:

"We heard that we should make people, not process, the focus of our stories. Although Bill Nemitz as a columnist has a measure of freedom that most reporters do not in choosing assignments, he provided examples of how we can produce better stories by looking beyond the usual suspects for interviews -- say, elected officials -- to seek out the people who are most affected by a given event.

In deciding how to write about a school board's decision to give middle school students access to prescription birth control, Nemitz didn't just interview the principal or the school board members. He got to the heart of the story by interviewing the students. He also found a unique, human angle on the Nielsen murder trial by interviewing the man's attorney, who had been placed in the less-than-enviable position of trying to defend a man who refused to talk to him and made bizarre statements in court without warning."

Eric Conrad
Executive Editor
Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel
Telephone: 207-621-5630