By Jonathan Hemmerdinger

When Kim Hart of Arlington, Va., sent her resume to The Washington Post to apply for the paper's summer internship program in 2004, she thought she'd never hear back.

After all, Hart, 27, who now works as a staff writer covering technology for the Post's business section and writes a weekly technology column, was one of 800 other applicants. Even her editor at Capital News Service, a program run by the University of Maryland where Hart was at school, thought her chances were slim.

"You're not going to get it," the editor said, "but it’s good for you to at least go through the experience." Hart distinctly remembers mailing her application and thinking, well, I'll never hear about that again.

A few weeks later, Hart was home in Florida with her family for the winter holiday.  That's when the The Post called. Hart had been accepted into the internship program. "I thought they were joking," she said.

Hart first discover she liked writing years earlier in Fort Myers, Fla., where she and her younger brother were raised. The family moved there in the late 1980s from Texas, settling in a bungalow-style home near the banks of the Caloosahatchee River. Kim's father, an accountant, worked just a few miles away; her mother, a speech pathologist, taught at an elementary school in the neighborhood.  The family's whole circle of life lay within a three-mile radius.

Hart discovered early that she had a talent for writing.  In the fourth grade, she won a writing contest. She also liked vocabulary, syntax and searching the thesaurus for the perfect word.

At the University of Florida in Gainesville, Hart initially majored in physical therapy, though she switched to public relations and took a course in reporting.

"I found that what I really enjoyed most about PR was writing stories ... formulating stories … writing press releases," Hart said. She wrote for the college newspaper—the Independent Florida Alligator, where she earned $18 per week—and worked as an intern at the city paper, The Gainesville Sun.

After graduating in 2004, Hart enrolled in the University of Maryland's master's of journalism program. While there, she worked as an editorial assistant at the American Journalism Review, a magazine published by the university.  She also interned in The Baltimore Sun’s features department. "That was the best experience I could have had.  That really taught me [how] a big-city newspaper ran," she said.  "It [helped] me figure out how to write a story in a way that would resonate with a particular audience."

Six months after graduating Hart started at The Post. "I have never been so nervous in my life," she said, “I thought I didn't belong here."

Hart's confidence was bolstered when an editor dropped a wire story about Vonage, the Internet phone service provider, on her desk.  She had five hours to write an improved version of the story for The Post.

Hart knew nothing about voice-over-Internet protocol, the technology used by Vonage. "That was one of those terrifying, frantic, sweating bullets kind of days," she said.

She found a few sources and wrote a story that led the business section the next day.  Her editors were impressed.  

That was it. Hart was in the game.

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As a new journalist, how did you find sources?

Reporters around me were really helpful. And if I was like, who do I call? They'd say, “Oh, try this guy.” I did a whole lot of Googling. What helped me [on the phone] was calling, saying, “This is Kim Hart from The Washington Post.” [That] has a whole lot more clout than saying, “I am Kim Hart and I am a student.” It's a lot easier to find people who want to talk to you if you have The Washington Post behind you. I called a lot of professors — law professors or technology professors, political science, engineering professors—who would explain the basic technology to me.

That's where I learned how to juggle writing those daily stories and chipping away at the larger feature stories. When I would have a professor on the phone, at the end I would always say, “What else are you seeing out there? What are the trends you are seeing? What are your students doing with technology?

Talk to me about your job at The Post. Has it been good?

It's been up and down, honestly.

Can you elaborate on that?

It was very difficult. I constantly felt pressure. I was working 24/7—especially when I got the telecom beat. That's a very competitive beat, and I wasn't prepared for it. I was covering a federal agency and all the political dynamics that went into it. I didn't know the protocol. The learning curve was really, really steep.  I felt like I was writing stories without even understanding what I was writing about.  That was scary.

Did you ever get any facts wrong?

Oh, yeah. I did. Verizon Wireless had written a letter to the [Federal Communications Commission] and I misinterpreted it and wrote a story that basically said the opposite of what Verizon was actually trying to say. I got in trouble for that one.

What does that mean?

I got yelled at by the company PR person, who demanded a correction…Then the top business editor came over and said, “I don't understand this correction.  Are you basically saying that the whole story was wrong?”  And I had to say, “Yeah, the whole story was wrong.”

You said you were working 24/7. What were your days like?

I would be up for breakfast at 7:30 to meet with sources -- lobbyists or local companies or CEOs —just to get to know people.  Then I would go to work for a couple hours [and] then go to a lunch to try to meet more people. Then usually [I would] be on deadline and crank out a story just in time to meet someone for drinks. That's how you get scoops, because you know people who tell you things that you are not supposed to know.

I would usually get a call…at 9:30 or 10 o'clock, saying, “The Wall Street Journal just posted a story. Can you match it?”  Sometimes I could, and most of the time I couldn't.  I was like, “No, I can't call people at 10 o'clock at night.”

It went on like that for five months and I finally cracked.  I said, there is just no way that I can continue on this path. But [The Post was] actually really great about it.  They said, “You're right. This is a huge beat. We'll try to rejigger your beat so it's not so rough on you.”

On the full-time business beat, how many stories were you cranking out a week?

I would say an average of three.  Some weeks a lot more, depending on the news, and some weeks I'd be working on a larger things and I would only write one. 

How do you generate story ideas?

I work very closely with my editor. I talk to her daily—or, I prefer to. I bring story ideas to her most of the time. Sometimes she'll see a wire story [and say] we need to cover that. So, I will. Reporters are responsible for knowing what is going-on on their beats and what's important enough to write a story [on].  And then I am often responsible for enterprise stories.

You think, “What's next in this process?”  If there is a bill going through Congress, I'll have to say to staffers, “What's the next milestone? What should I be looking out for and what's worthy of me writing about?” A lot of the things here in Washington are month-long, if not yearlong, processes. You can't write every day about what happened the previous day because you are covering more than that. You have to write about the major developments. You have to know when those developments are coming. 

Coming up with ideas for the column is much easier because I am essentially going to a lot of networking events. There's lots of happy hours.

If you go to a networking event, is [that] the story?  Or is [the story] something that you pick up there?

Sometimes it is the story. It depends—especially if there is something different about the networking event. If it's changed because of the economy, [or] if there is no one there anymore because no one can afford the $25 admission fee, or if everyone is there because everyone is out of work and everyone is trying to connect to people. Then that is the story.

Do you do most of your reporting over the phone?

I would say over the phone still. For the column, most of that is in person because I am out and about talking to people or visiting companies. Writing for hard-news stories—it's mostly over the phone, unless I am at a hearing or at a meeting.

Do you take notes on a pad?

On a pad.

How about when you are on the phone in the office?

Typing.  I have a headset so that I have my hands free.  I've become an extremely fast typer [sic].  I'll have one file open that is just my notes. And I'll take all of my notes in that. Everyone that I've talked to is all in one file so that I can scroll through and search for key words.  Then, I'll have another file open that is my story—my copy.

Let's say you have a story due tomorrow. When do you get the story done?  Do you do a draft and then you fact-check it?

I fact-check as I am going. I find that for me that's more fail-safe.  Or, I will highlight or put X's on something that I don't know and I want to look up later.  It's not worth interrupting your train of thought. But if I have the titles and everything in my notes, which I should, then I usually just put it in and fact check it as I am writing.

How complete is it when you send it off?  And how different is it when it comes back?

Mostly, it's not that different. I think the most thing that my editor does is move a couple paragraphs around, because she will think something at the bottom of the story is more interesting than what's at the top. She'll say, “We should emphasize this point more.” Or, she'll ask me questions like, “What do you mean by this?” Or, “This is redundant.” You get a thick skin because they are not nicely worded questions. They are like, “What the hell are you talking about?”

You said Sprint Nextel was a challenging story.  Why?
 
Sprint Nextel was the bane of my existence for a while because [it’s] basically going under and [it’s] a huge local company for us and it was very competitive story. The Wall Street Journal had two or three reporters covering everything. There were rumors about the board trying to oust the CEO and whether they were going to spin off Nextel, whether they were going to move their headquarters back to Kansas City. I was responsible for all of that, on top of my other responsibilities—the FCC and other things.

That was when it was really bad, with copy editors calling me at 10 o'clock saying that The Wall Street Journal says that they are going to fire Gary Forsee tomorrow. Can you match that? I was constantly getting my ass kicked and it was really demoralizing. Really demoralizing.
      

A lot of your stories—digital TV, for instance—there is a convergence of business and government. Is that hard to get your hands around?

 It's very challenging. And once you are doing it more, once you learn the effect of government on business—that was hard for me to grasp. Wait a minute, what do you mean this decision will mean billions and billions and billions of dollars for X and Y company?  I had always had the two separate in my head. Government is in one silo and business is in another. 

Do you work as well under pressure as you do if you have more time?

I used to work a lot better under pressure. I get very flustered now. If I am not under deadline pressure, I usually don't outline my stories because I feel like I do better just flowing. If I know I am going to be under deadline, I'll write all my B matter first—all the background stuff—so  when it is deadline [I] can focus on the top three paragraphs and on the bottom. You already have the middle and you can just plunk it in there.

When do you figure out the lead?

 I usually write that first. I need to have the lead to know what I need to do next. If I am under deadline, I write all the B matter first and then I go back and then I kind of start writing the lead.

The interview was conducted April 1, 2009, and was condensed and edited. Some questions and answers have been reorganized for clarity.