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How to use news stories to spark feature and content ideas

Tips from Jan Winburn’s essay ‘Finding good topics: an Editor’s Questions’

published in Telling True Stories (Penguin Books)

 

  • What are the enduring issues of the day and how can those issues be seen from inside one person’s life?
  • Is there someone’s life like those in the headlines?
  • Look at the opposite of a truism. For example, during the economic boom reporter Dirk Johnson wrote about a place that was supposedly prosperous, and a person there who wasn’t very prosperous.
  • Where is the close-up on a story? Where does mystery remain? When a story has been heavily covered, reposition the camera. Look for a close-up angle on the story that hasn’t been told.
  • Look for ambiguity in a story?
  • Look for an untold background tale.
  • Is an ending really a beginning. Endings mark the beginnings of new stories about to unfold.

 

 

 

 

 

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July 17, 2014