Reporting was simple, he said: pick up the phone, ask a question and write down the answer. It was essentially an instruction to listen, the most important thing reporters do. But listening is the key, especially when covering social affairs, in which the patterns of people’s lives often emerge slowly. Alston didn’t provide the people he was going to meet with an agenda: he was simply going to listen. The question of why we were reporting from a food bank in Newcastle or a housing estate in Glasgow now had a ready answer: because Alston was listening.

Source: The Guardian December 29, 2018 09:00 UTC