Ricketson's advice about generating fresh story ideas is a blend of common sense and expert guidance. He highlights the need to take charge yourself and heavily sift through the media. Wish you best of luck!
TAKE CHARGE
Don't depend on your editors. generate your own ideas.
Spend time sifting Media
Read publications your audience would not regularly read as well as they do.
Read trade journals, government reports and academic journals
Read good literature, both for the writing and the ideas.
Soak up mass culture, whether film, TV, live music or chat rooms.
Talk to anyone and everyone.
Draw on your own experience.
Keep an ideas file.
THINK LATERALLY
News: Tell me something I don't know. Cynthia King
News and features are not different worlds but different approaches to the same world.Good journalists write about what is on societies mind even if society does not like to admit it.
CONNECT THE DOTS
Look for a connection between events. (Human cost of Hajj Stampede VS hajj Caravan attacked during Ottoman times)
Listing projects. Readers resist abstraction, but they love lists e.g seven failed projects around Austrailia.
FIND SOMETHING NEW ABOUT AN OLD SUBJECT
Readers are soaked wet with information, but they are still thirsty for knowledge. They need help in understanding the meaning and context and they need to be given more incisive information.
Think Small / Localize.
Shift your vantage point on an issue.
Zoom in and Zoom out.
Look ahead.
TAKE CHARGE
Don't depend on your editors. generate your own ideas.
Spend time sifting Media
Read publications your audience would not regularly read as well as they do.
Read trade journals, government reports and academic journals
Read good literature, both for the writing and the ideas.
Soak up mass culture, whether film, TV, live music or chat rooms.
Talk to anyone and everyone.
Draw on your own experience.
Keep an ideas file.
THINK LATERALLY
News: Tell me something I don't know. Cynthia King
News and features are not different worlds but different approaches to the same world.Good journalists write about what is on societies mind even if society does not like to admit it.
CONNECT THE DOTS
Look for a connection between events. (Human cost of Hajj Stampede VS hajj Caravan attacked during Ottoman times)
Listing projects. Readers resist abstraction, but they love lists e.g seven failed projects around Austrailia.
FIND SOMETHING NEW ABOUT AN OLD SUBJECT
Readers are soaked wet with information, but they are still thirsty for knowledge. They need help in understanding the meaning and context and they need to be given more incisive information.
Think Small / Localize.
Shift your vantage point on an issue.
Zoom in and Zoom out.
Look ahead.
good advice, Tazeen.
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