Struggling to Come Up with Story Ideas

As a young journalist, one of my greatest challenges is coming up with story ideas. I don’t know why, but it just seems so hard a difficult. It seems like everything I can think of is either not newsworthy enough or I can’t gain access. It just sucks to be honest.

Surely I can’t be the only aspiring journalist in this situation, but at times it seems like I’m the only one. I will sit for hours at a time surfing the web and searching local events to try to come up with a story idea and wind up with absolutely nothing, except for clumps of hair. Am I looking to hard? Am I looking in the wrong spots?

I literally have this on my mind at all times. I have two assignments coming up and I’m having such a difficult time coming up with ideas. Driving home from work I think about what I can do. Driving home from school I think about a story I can do. Walking to class it’s on my mind. It is always on my mind, but I just don’t have a clue on what to do. How do professional journalists seem to have stories fall into their laps? I know that a lot of hard work goes into researching those stories, so I’m exaggerating about them falling into their laps, but seriously it seems so easy for them to come up with good stories. What am I missing?

One of the most helpful sites I’ve found though was Experience Columbus. It organizes all the events going on in Columbus and separates them into categories. I’m thankful for that site, but really that’s not all I can rely on. I have to get over this bugaboo if I want to be a successful journalist, I realize that. The problem is, I don’t know how.

May 11, 2011 | Categories: COMM 426 | Leave a comment

Uncharted Territory

I had an experience today that has never happened to me and it was extremely awkward. I was unsure how to handle it, and ultimately kind of embarrassed.

I was interviewing a man for an assignment for my Comm 426 class. The assignment is to create an audio/photo story using Soundslides—a software that combines audio and pictures into a nice finished product for publication.

I’ve interviewed numerous people about numerous things and have talked to women, men, children and the elderly, but I’ve never interviewed a person who is professionally diagnosed as mentally challenged.

I was a little apprehensive to start with, but I was going to be talking to him about sports—something that I absolutely love—so I thought I’d be ok. I had a game-plan for the interview and I was prepared to enter it with confidence and come out with everything I needed.

Well, I entered with confidence, but didn’t come out with everything I needed, and probably left a little confidence behind when I exited the interview. It was tough and a place I’ve never been before.

I designed my game-plan based on techniques about interviewing I’ve learned in my journalism classes at Ohio State. Basically it was pretty simple. I made a list of 10 questions that I wanted to ask, and put them in the order I thought I’d ask them. Starting out with the easy questions, just to ease into the interview. You know, the “Introduce Yourself” questions, the “Let Me Know Who You Are” questions. Nothing to touchy.

After asking those and hopefully making the man a little more at ease, I planned on asking him about his disability and how he copes with it, and what role sports play in dealing with it. The answers to these questions would ultimately make up the “meat and potatoes” of my story.

After getting through the “main course” of questions, I was going to finish up with some sweet, fluffy questions, just to make sure we left the interview on good terms and the man would want to talk to me again. Kind of serving up a nice dessert.

All was well through the first set of questions. There were smiles, laughs and giggles. I felt confident. I thought, “Well here we go, let’s get down to business.” So, I asked if he could explain or describe his disability to me.

I was not prepared for what came next. I mean going into it, I thought the worst, you know. I think ultimately you need to prepare yourself for the worst case scenario. I thought maybe he would say that it was too touchy of a situation for him to talk about, or that he wouldn’t give me a whole lot on the surface, I’d have to dig for it.

I have strategies for dealing with these things. However, I didn’t have a strategy for what he said to me and I kind of froze, mumbled a little and ultimately ended the interview a lot shorter than I wanted it to be.

His response to me asking if he could explain or describe his disability to me:

“What disability?”

I felt awful. I felt like such a terrible person. I essentially just told this guy there was something wrong with him to his face, and he didn’t know what I was talking about.

I have never been in this situation and I felt terrible. The man was super nice and he was really genuine with me and willing to give me anything I needed, but I didn’t know how to get what I “really” needed.

The answer he gave kind of put an abrupt ending to the interview. Especially, after the about 15 seconds of awkward silence. I told him thank you and that I’ll see him later in the week to spend a day or two with him to take some pictures.

I hope to be able to sit down with him again and talk to him more, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get him to talk about his disorder. I honestly don’t know how to get him to. The last thing I want to do is offend him. I just want to be able to tell his unique story. I’m certainly in uncharted territory.

April 27, 2011 | Categories: COMM 426 | Leave a comment

A Journalist Asking For Help

I’m looking for a story idea for my midterm. It needs to be newsworthy and have the capability of being told with pictures and audio, no print story.

I’m up for any kinds of suggestions. I have a few ideas in mind, but none of them are “Home-Runs” in my opinion and I’d like to get others perspective on what’s important in the world right now.

So is there anything out there that you guys think should be told, or want pursued to find out more information?

April 20, 2011 | Categories: COMM 426 | Leave a comment

Photojournalism Struggles

I’m a full two-weeks into my multimedia journalism class, Comm 426. Our only assignments thus far have consisted of using a camera to take pictures of people and I have found this aspect of the class to be very difficult. Going up and asking a person about what they think about something or asking them to give me a quote of some sort is so much easier than taking their picture.

I didn’t find asking random people about things exactly easy, I found it kind of awkward actually, but taking someone’s picture is 10x harder, and feels so much more intrusive. It’s just so weird and I feel so creepy. I’m not sure how to go about getting their picture.

I’ve been to about four different places and gotten pictures and names at all four places, but I’m having such a difficult time with it. It’s like pulling teeth. I see the shot, but it’s like I get butterflies and I get too nervous to take it because I feel so awkward.

And unfortunately, getting the shot isn’t the only thing I have to do. I have to go up to the person afterward and kind of be like “um yeah I just took a random picture of you, and you have no idea who I am, but can I have your name to go along with the picture I just took?” It’s just so weird to me. I feel like I would say no to someone if they asked me that. I feel like I’m the goofy, creepy guy with the camera that my friends and I would make fun of if we saw him taking pictures.

I don’t like the feeling at all, but I’m going to have to get over my fears and anxiety somehow—there’s seven weeks to go. I just don’t know how.

April 10, 2011 | Categories: COMM 426 | Leave a comment