There are all kinds of interesting things happening around us and all kinds of interesting people. Turning them into news stories is a skill.
A reporter tries to find news stories by calling around. (Illustration by News Decoder)
Journalism and activism can be powerful tools for change. Each week in our News Decoder Top Tips, we share advice from reporters, editors, writers and master storytellers on ways to better engage audiences and spur change. In this Top Tip, Marcy Burstiner, News Decoder’s educational news director, shows how reporters form news stories out of things they see or hear.
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Reporters who work as daily staff on news publications have to come up with story ideas all the time.
At a weekly newspaper I once worked for, I had to present ideas for four stories every Thursday. Really, I had to come up with five ideas, because the three editors who heard the ideas would invariably shoot down one of them. I found there is a trick to it.
There are basically three types of news stories. One type focuses on something happening now, or something that just happened or will happen soon. Those are called “hard news.”
Where I live in Northwest Ireland, the hard news stories as I write are about a local school bus provider which announced it might stop service, police response to a national child sex abuse scandal and a school shooting in the U.S. state of Georgia.
The second type is a “trend” story. That’s when the reporter spots three of the same things happening. The idea is one example could be an anomaly, two could be a coincidence. But if you can find three, there are probably more out there. This rule is a bit outdated in the digital era as you can find three of anything on the internet, but it is still acceptable as a way to rationalize a trend story.
Trendspotting
I once worked at a newspaper where an editor convinced a reporter to do a trend story on the popularity of the white button-down shirt. I was glad I wasn’t on the features desk there.
As I write, The Guardian news site has trend stories on how young people are smoking marijuana instead of drinking wine and the popularity of the “smash burger.” At the Irish Times there’s a story on how a number of Republicans in the United States are announcing they will vote for Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
The third type is a “profile.” That’s where you focus on just one person, usually someone famous or noteworthy. To find examples of profiles I turned to magazines. Rolling Stone has one on Australian comedian Jim Jefferies, Vanity Fair profiled actress Jenna Ortega and Time featured philanthropist Melinda French Gates.
Coming up with story ideas is one thing. Producing those stories is another. I could propose a profile of Melinda French Gates, but would she grant me an interview? Probably not. I might propose a trend story on young people smoking weed, but can I find three people to talk on the record? Maybe, maybe not.
And the problem with hard news stories is that the editors at the weekly I worked for didn’t want any stories the daily news outlets would cover so I had to find stuff happening that no one else noticed. That wasn’t easy.
But I found that I could propose a profile on someone like Melinda French Gates and if she wouldn’t talk to me turn it into a trend story. I just needed two more women philanthropists, one of whom would talk to me.
Trends turn into profiles.
Or I could propose a trend story and if I couldn’t find three good examples, turn it into a profile by focusing on one of the examples I did find. So instead of a trend story on people loving smash burgers, I could find the head of one smash burger company to profile. Or instead of a story about Republicans voting for Harris, I could do a profile on one noteworthy Republican doing so.
Each of these types of stories can be light or serious. You could do a trend story that is investigative: looking into cases of child abuse in schools for example, or cases of police harassment or college students who live out of their cars. You could do a profile of someone connected to something serious: a prosecutor going after human traffickers or a politician fighting for better healthcare.
Regardless, all the while that you look for trend examples or call people hoping they will agree to a profile, you can ask people what’s happening around them.
In doing so you will likely stumble across a hard news story. Stuff happens everywhere all the time and most of it isn’t sent out on press releases. You find out it is happening by talking to folks. And when you do it that way you break the story, which means you get it out there before any other reporters.
And that’s pretty cool.
Questions to consider:
- What is the difference between a hard news story and a trend story?
- How can you turn a profile into a trend story?
- Can you spot a trend happening around you that might be worth a story?
Marcy Burstiner is the educational news director for News Decoder. She is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School and professor emeritus of journalism and mass communication at the California Polytechnic University, Humboldt in California. She is the author of the book Investigative Reporting: From premise to publication.