Coming up with national media story ideas
How to generate ideas for stories to pitch to the press
Sometimes the hardest part of a pitch is coming up with the right idea in the first place. You (or your PR client) might have a brilliant concept for a business or a campaign, but translating it into something the national media will actually want to cover can be tricky.
One of the most common things I get asked when people find out I’m a journalist is: “Do you come up with all your stories yourself?”. The answer is no - about half of my journalism work comes from story ideas I’ve generated or developed from PR pitches, the other half is from editors coming to me with ideas.
But still, as a large proportion of my livelihood depends on me being able to come up with story ideas, I’ve tried and tested lots of story generation techniques over the years.
Here are some of the ones I’ve found to be the most successful:
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