Contest Winner Tips: Towns, Gowns and Taxes

Editor's note: EWA will post tips and advice over the next two weeks from first-prize winners of EWA's National Awards for Education Reporting. Karin Fischer, Eric Kelderman, and Libby Nelson won first prize in the Special Interest, Institutional and Trade Publications category. Karin Fischer describes her story and the project below.

Colleges and Towns Square Off Over Taxes

When the clips first started coming across my desk about the stand-off between the city of Pittsburgh and its colleges over the funds they contribute to municipal services, I scratched my head. Pittsburgh had long been held up as the ultimate town-gown success story, a former company town, in this case of the steel industry, turned college town. So, what was going on that had caused the city's mayor to threaten to tax college students, a step pretty much unheard of?

While the issue was getting a lot of day-to-day coverage in local newspapers, we immediately knew it was a story to which we could bring our depth of higher-education expertise. And it was also fairly clear that we had two stories to tell: one about the immense budgetary pressures on municipal governments that caused them, in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, to consider taxing untaxed, nonprofit universities and the other about Pittsburgh.

My colleague Eric Kelderman has ample experience covering both tax law and state politics (the legislature in Pennsylvania looked likely to get involved in the debate), so it made sense for him to write the first piece.

When Eric and I began meeting with our editors, Sara Hebel and Scott Smallwood, we all wondered aloud how common was the relationship between Pittsburgh and its colleges -- and we found no comprehensive resources about fees paid in place of taxes by major metropolitan research universities. We recruited Libby Nelson, then a Chronicle intern, to undertake the herculean task of surveying universities about their payments, a process that took multiple phone calls and email messages for virtually every institution.

For my part, I got on a plane to Pittsburgh, with the assignment of pinning down what exactly had gone wrong in the town-gown honeymoon. The challenge was twofold: getting people to step back from the current hostility to reflect on the relationship and making it an engaging read. Even for a university audience, the words "payments in lieu of taxes" can be less than sexy!

One of the things that helped me most was that I really wasn't sure what I was looking for. So, I booked interviews pretty broadly, with people -- local business associations, community groups, city councilors -- that might not be obvious sources. I also was open about my ignorance, asking everyone to who else I should meet. I made some of my best contacts that way.

I also left lots of time unscheduled, to wander about and get a feel for the city and its residents. In the end, the story had to be about people, and I needed that time to hear their tales. One of my best interviews was pure happenstance -- giving my destination to a cab driver sparked a soliloquy about the local colleges. We ended driving around the block a few times, but I got a perspective I wouldn't have otherwise.