The Mega Millions lottery jackpot was up past a half billion dollars, so I knew that online interest would be high. The drawing was that night.
What neither I nor a USA TODAY reporter had was any story that said this beyond a bare-bones, no-quotes item.
I found a day-old piece from a suburban reporter at The Record in Bergen County, New Jersey. I had worked with him a year earlier to get more details in a story about black bears moving into New York City’s New Jersey suburbs.
In his lottery story, he focused on financial planning for the potential jackpot winner, something our Money section reporters had done recently. But he had direct quotes, and I decided to use his piece as the base for a day-of story, adding information from other Network writers, attributed at the end, plus other fun facts credited via links.
What it also needed: A way to tell readers whether this was a really big prize or not. I found a list of the largest jackpots and turned it into an Infogram interactive graphic. This $500 million-plus prize didn’t even crack the top 10.
(Incidentally, reporter Jai Agnish told me the 2016 bear story helped him retain his job during layoffs that happened soon after Gannett bought The Record in 2016. He had new bosses who didn’t know his work and informally had to reapply for his job. He used that story not only as a clip but also an example of working with new-to-Bergen editors at USA TODAY.)
