A new approach to the three-by-three model

Posted: August 25, 2012 | Contents: Chapter 4 | Tags: McDonalds, three-by-three model, travel journalism, travel writing | 8 Comments »

The three-by-three model described in Chapter 4 accomplishes two imperatives for the travel journalist. One is journalistic excellence. The other is journalistic efficiency. In other words, get as much good stuff as possible for the least investment of time and money.

The model proposes that the travel journalist report, write and publish (or prepare to publish) three stories over a three-week cycle. Week One is at-home pre-work. Week Two is the reporting trip. Week Three is back-at-home writing and publishing.

I explored a variant of the model during a recent reporting trip to Prague. I was there to test-drive TOL’s Foreign Correspondent course. The at-home pre-work assignment was to come up with a story idea. Instead of three stories — one sure thing, a story that emerges from serendipity, and a story based on gathering string — as the model proposes, I decided to do one main story with an assortment of sidebars.

The topic: The most-American of companies, McDonald’s.

In the at-home pre-work, the starting point was a tip from The Economist that an academician in Prague and his U.S. colleague had developed a way to compare real wage rates country-by-country according to wages McDonald’s paid its cews and the prices of Big Macs.

With this tip in hand, the  question became: How many other McDonald’s angles might I mine in Prague? Turns out, lots.

— Founder Ray Kroc’s parents were Czech. A plaque in the village of Stupno, some 60 miles southwest of Prague, attests to this.

— Europe accounts for 40 percent of McDonald’s revenue — eight percentage points more than the U.S. And, in Europe, the Czech Republic is a “role model” for McDonald’s growth.

— One of two failed items Kroc added to the McDonald’s menu was a Czech pastry his mother, Rose, made for him as a child — kolacky. Today, it’s back on the menu in the McCafes that McDonald’s has opened in Prague.

— One of the “ten most unusual McDonald’s in the world” is in Prague. It’s on the ground floor of a building that houses The Museum of Communisim.

— A McDonald’s in Prague was the site of a violent protest against the company in 1998, one of 11 violent protests against McDonald’s across Europe between 1996 and 2000, more than any other continent.

After the one-week reporting trip, I ended up with this nut graf: One needs to leave the U.S. to see what’s happening at this most-American of companies. The starting point is Europe, which last year accounted for 40 percent of McDonald’s revenue — eight percentage points more than the U.S. And, once in Europe, the Czech Republic is a keen perch from which to see McDonald’s — its past, present and future.

The experience reinforced the underpinnings of the three-by-three model. But, it convinced me that the goal need not be three stories. A main story and an assortment of sidebars — a package, if you will — on a topic of broad interest in just as valuable.

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