Mother lode of story ideas: The Poynter Institute

If you're looking for story ideas related to journalism issues, I strongly recommend The Poynter Institute and specifically the Romenesko media blog. Here are a couple interesting articles I spotted there just today and sample story ideas stemming from them:


-- Citing coverage from Joplin, Mo., one expert suggests news articles are something of a luxury when a breaking story already is covered thoroughly via Twitter. Idea No. 1: We have plenty of social media and news coverage experts at the Cronkite School and among your speakers. What do they see as the role of Twitter versus the news article? With no revenue attached to Twitter, does it make business sense to put it all out there via Twitter? I bet Jeff Jarvis would talk if a reporter arranged the interview far enough in advance. Idea No. 2: The Arizona Republic has people paid to be audience engagement specialists, meaning they stoke interest in items on the website and do other things to connect the public with the Republic's digital presence. A story could profile this role through these people or look at how high school journalism programs might promote this new career path.

-- Rolling Stone's publisher calls the rush of magazines to iPad suicidal. Idea: What do speakers at the institute and publishers who have iPad editions such as The Washington Post and New York Times think of the potential of that delivery medium?

This is slightly dated, but The Daily Beast recently listed journalism No. 1 on its list of the 20 Most Useless Degrees. There are plenty of people at and around the institute with thoughts on that.

When it comes to story ideas at the institute, I'm all about feasibility. Feasibility in this case comes down to access to sources because there isn't much time to report and write. If you're coming to a leading journalism school with an accomplished group of high school journalism advisers to hear from journalism educators and leaders about journalism in general and high school journalism in particular, my suggestion is to look at journalism, high school journalism or the Cronkite School for an idea. If you're looking outside the institute, don't look too far outside because transportation is difficult and time-consuming.

Steve Elliott
Arizona State University
Phoenix