Twenty tips your editor won't tell you

Tonight we had the pleasure of chatting with Lane DeGregory of the St. Petersburg Times (all the way in Florida!) about how she finds her stories -- and where we can find ours.

Lane's stories have appeared in the "Best Newspaper Writing"editions of 2000, 2004 and 2006. She has been a speaker at the Nieman Narrative Conference at Harvard and has won more than a dozen national awards, including the 2008 Winner of the American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for non-deadline writing and the 2007 winner of the Ernie Pyle Award from the Scripps Howard Foundation for human interest writing.

It was our chapter's first skype conference -- and Lane's, too. It was great to see and hear her talk about her stories while we looked at pictures of the people and places she's covered.

You can access the presentation with her tips and pictures from her stories here.

She said she was happy to answer questions at any time -- e-mail her at degregory@sptimes.com . If you click here, you can also keep track of her articles!

Thanks again, Lane! (And to her son, who helped set up our skype conference!)

-- Erica