Scholars find story ideas in life experiences

By Kate Kennedy
For Chipsquinn.org

Posted: Aug. 15, 2003

Write about what you know.

Writers often get that advice to help improve their copy. But what many newspaper interns find is that what you know can lead to good story ideas.

When DeAnna Carpenter arrived in Wisconsin for her Summer internship at The Wausau Daily Herald, she didn’t know where to go for hair-care products. After doing a little checking, Carpenter found that “most black people here go to Milwaukee and Chicago to get what they need because of the bigger black populations in those cities. This inspired me to write about it.”

Her story, which appeared on a Sunday features-section front, was headlined “Cutting across cultures/Growth of area’s black population creates need for different kinds of hair care.”

“The number of black and biracial people in the areas is growing,” she wrote, “and so is the demand for hair care that addresses the specific needs of black hair. More local business have begun to offer goods and services geared to black hair.”

“That’s a story I’m not going to find,” Joel Christopher, Carpenter’s editor at The Daily Herald, says. “It’s relevant to our community because we have a growing population of blacks in Wausau. So DeAnna hit on something that anyone in this community who is black is wondering about – is talking about. Most of our white reporters would never have stumbled upon that story.”

DeAnna Carpenter

Carpenter also received positive reader feedback about her story. A reader called to say that an African-American job candidate had asked her where he could get hair care in Wausau. She referred him to Carpenter’s story.

“Our own experience and interests can turn into story ideas because they show aspects of life that apply to other people as well as to us,” says Cindy Stiff, ASNE/APME Fellows career coach who works with Scholars at orientation.

 “If we can figure out why something is important to us, why we care, we can figure out why someone else would care. Then all we need to do is figure out a reason why we should be the one to write the story and why it should be written now,” Stiff says. “We wind up with a focus that is specific, an understanding of why readers care and a story idea our editors will love.”

Carpenter asks, “There is truth behind the saying ‘Everyone has a story to tell,’ so why should interns be any different?

“I came into this internship wanting to learn and find out more about the community, especially the black community,” she says. “But I didn’t have the slightest idea on how to do it. At first, coming up with story ideas seemed the hardest thing to do, until I started to think about the things that affected me and how they probably affect someone else. This is the driving force behind my black hair-care story.”

She says stories generate more ideas.

“Everyone was willing to give me a tip and a story idea because they wanted their stories to be told.”

She wrote a second story that originated from personal experience.

 “I am a member of a marching band (at Florida A&M University). It's natural that I have an interest in doing a project that will highlight high-school marching bands in the area.”

Her story will be published later this month.

Stiff, a writing coach, suggests that reporters work with editors to decide whether it would be best to write a story using the reporter’s personal experience or whether it would be better to use an experience to develop questions other people can answer. In both cases, Carpenter used her experiences as background and focused on people in her community.

She wasn’t the only reporter bringing new story ideas to The Daily Herald. Scholar

Vonna Keomanyvong

Vonna Keomanyvong of the University of Kansas recalled her own experience of becoming a U.S. citizen to write about the emotional challenges teens face as they try to become citizens.

“I am proud of this project because the paper has never covered anything like this before,” Keomanyvong says. “They have written stories about citizenship laws, but they never tackled it from this perspective. I had to go through the testing process in 2000. Although the test was pretty easy, it was hard for me emotionally because I've lived in the United States since I was one and yet I had to go through the process just for a piece of paper that I said that I belong here.”

Christopher, Keomanyvong’s assigning editor, says, “Vonna brought that experience to a story. So the story had a lot more depth and a lot more texture. It was more meaningful than if someone without that experience had tried to tackle the same issue.”

Stiff says reporters also can develop story ideas using the experience and interests of other people. To do that, reporters should ask questions about what is happening in other people’s lives and what is important to them, not just questions about an event or action.

As an example, she suggests asking:

• What has you concerned right now?

• What is the most wonderful thing that has happened to you in the past two weeks?

• If you could persuade me to do one story, what would it be?

Whether reporters write from their own experience or the experience of others, Stiff has a last piece of advice for reporters on the lookout for story ideas:

 “Write down your ideas before you forget them.”

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