People are her beat

Drawing on her experience covering rural southeastern Virginia's people, farms and courthouses, The Virginian-Pilot reporter Linda McNatt explained what it takes to be a good writer to Dr. Bill Ruehlmann’s journalism class Thursday, Sept. 16.

Along with a wealth of advice, tips and strategies, she left the assurance that it doesn't take a job on The New York Times or a beat in the Washington, D.C. corridors of power to produce stories that appear all over the world and take major journalistic awards.

You have to have a genuine interest in people,” McNatt said. "People are what make a good story.”

She left evidence that good stories are everywhere.

McNatt finds them in old churches and newly plowed farm fields. In courts of law and mental health support groups. In cities and towns like Suffolk, Smithfield, Surry and Dendron.

Dendron? It's a town northwest of Suffolk, just off Route 460, population 297. It has an outdated, seriously crippled waterworks. It also has Ben Muncy, an aged but energetic mayor who fixes all the town's pumps and pipes himself. When another publication covered the story with a straight news focus on the poor state of the water supply, McNatt read it and saw something different.

Felt it, actually.

When she senses a good story in the making, the first clue is physical. Even before the thought makes it to her head, there's an “aha!”

“It's a kind of journalistic orgasm,” she explained, causing a wave of surprised laughter from the note-taking students.

“What I saw in the story was a 77-year-old man holding a whole town together,” she said. “He cuts the grass. He sends out the water bills. And if people can't get the money to him, he drives over and picks it up.”

Her story about Dendron's mayor ran in the Aug. 11 Virginian-Pilot and ended up on the Associated Press wire. The human interest feature ends with a quote from a Dendron city council member: “When people turn on their faucets in the morning, they should thank God and thank Ben Muncy.”

The stories that come pouring out of McNatt's notes aren't always heartwarming. Her western Tidewater beat includes “courts and cops” coverage of accidents, crimes and legal proceedings. Reporting on a court case of an 8-year-old's alleged molestation by a neighbor, McNatt researched, interviewed and checked every possible source for background facts. They led to an inescapable sense that the molestation did take place.

“You hope it doesn't show through in your reporting,” she said.

In this case, it didn't.

“I got an e-mail from the defendant's uncle saying, 'Thank you for being fair and balanced."

“I try hard not to judge,” McNatt said. “From the homeless people who stand outside our newspaper office to the mayor of a city, everybody deserves to be treated in a very human way.”

McNatt is especially attuned to the human condition as it plays out on her largely rural beat. She's a home-grown product of the region she covers, born in Portsmouth and now living in a restored farmhouse in Suffolk.

“I love the country,” she said.

McNatt, the mother of thr grown children, has the look of a woman who's gotten her tan in fields and gardens rather than in a lounge chair by a pool. Grey-streaked, curly red hair frames a face with dark eyes and a mouth that breaks easily into a smile. In a country woman's voice - smoky, down-to-earth and colloquial - she talked about her own crops from a back yard garden where “everything got rained out this year. Squash, peppers, tomatoes. All I've got left is sweet potatoes.”

But she grows things that don't get washed away in rain or blistered by sun. In her relationships with the people she covers, McNatt grows trust. Empathy. And a sense of connectedness.

“When you drive down a country road at midnight and you see a tractor moving along in a field with its lights still on, still working,” she said, “you realize a farmer has to love what he does.”

For that matter, so does a reporter.

Asked about the positive and negative aspects of a reporter's life, McNatt said, “The up side is that every day's different. The down side is that it consumes you. Even when I'm not at work, I'm thinking about work.”

And there's a good bit of public attention, not always welcome, which comes with having a byline.

“In newspaper work, people call you at home and stop you in the grocery store,” she said. “If you want to work eight hours a day, be a banker.”

But when a writer invests herself in being a fair, accurate and balanced reporter, the dividends can be gratifying. McNatt has won awards from the Virginia Press Association and the international Scripps Howard news service. In addition to a series of awards for agricultural stories, she has been honored as the Virginia Farm Bureau's “Writer of the Year.”

The Virginian-Pilot reporter seems equally rewarded by a number of more personal, offbeat awards. For her writing and participation in an ongoing support group, part of the National Alliance for the Mental Ill, she received a silver iris pin and a citation pronouncing her “the most wonderful undiagnosed crazy person we know.”

When McNatt investigated an ancient pipe organ that had fallen into disrepair at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Smithfield, her stories got picked up by the wire services. They appeared worldwide and brought a corps of historians and experts flocking to the small town. As a result, the 17th century instrument was restored and the organ committee at St. Luke's gave McNatt a special Squeaky Fiddlestick Award for raising international awareness of their treasured artifact.

Asked for advice on how to become a good writer, McNatt said, “Read! I read anything, everything.”

What about how to become a good reporter?

“Try to develop an ease of being around people,” McNatt advised. “Tell the truth. Don't lie!” [And] "Never go into a story with a preconceived notion.”

And be curious.

“Curiosity is an element of a good reporter.”

McNatt plants, feeds and waters her own sense of the curious with the same passion she brings to her garden. Sometimes, curiosity and garden get cross pollinated. When she covers agricultural stories, occasionally there are new seed varieties passed out for the taking. She pockets them and plants them at home.

She's grown cotton seeds into plants “the size of a small tree.”

She not only planted seeds for miniature corn - the one-inch variety you get in entrees at a Chinese restaurant - she also harvested, shucked, cooked and served the tiny crop as part of a family Sunday dinner.

She reports that her son-in-law looked at the little yellow corn cobs, looked up at her and asked, “What's the point?”

Maybe it's the same point as McNatt made about the farmer plowing his field at midnight. Whether the story is about a peanut crop in Suffolk, a restored pipe organ in Smithfield, a “Little Engine That Could”-style waterworks in Dendron, or a plate of tiny corn on your own table, you write about it because there's a kernel of truth, interest or knowledge to be passed along.

It's enough to make you love what you do.