ABSTRACT

Journalism of Ideas is a comprehensive field guide for brainstorming, discovering, reporting, digitizing, and pitching news, opinion, and feature stories within journalism 2.0. With on-the-job advice from professional journalists, activities to sharpen your multimedia reporting skills, and dozens of story ideas ripe for adaptation, Dan Reimold helps you develop the journalistic know-how that will set you apart at your campus media outlet and beyond.


The exercises, observations, anecdotes, and tips in this book cover every stage of the story planning and development process, including how news judgment, multimedia engagement, records and archival searches, and various observational techniques can take your reporting to the next level. Separate advice focuses on the storytelling methods involved in data journalism, photojournalism, crime reporting, investigative journalism, and commentary writing. In addition to these tricks of the trade, Journalism of Ideas features an extensive set of newsworthy, timely, and unorthodox story ideas to jumpstart your creativity. The conversation continues on the author’s blog, College Media Matters.


Reimold also shows students how to successfully launch a career in journalism: the ins and outs of pitching stories, getting your work published, and navigating the post-graduation job search. Related sections of the book highlight the art of freelancing 2.0, starting an independent site, blogging, constructing quality online portfolios, securing internships, and building a social media following.

chapter 1|8 pages

The Idea Stage

chapter 2|11 pages

A Journalism Life

chapter 3|12 pages

People Stories

chapter 4|15 pages

Fresh Perspectives

chapter 5|14 pages

Words, Letters, and Lots of Ideas

chapter 6|15 pages

Timely Ideas

chapter 7|8 pages

Trendy Ideas

chapter 8|15 pages

Criminal Ideas

chapter 9|13 pages

Location, Location, Location

chapter 10|11 pages

The Local Angle

chapter 11|13 pages

Building a Beat

chapter 12|13 pages

Records Reporting

chapter 13|13 pages

Data Journalism

chapter 14|17 pages

Photojournalism Ideas

chapter 15|12 pages

An Immersion of Ideas

chapter 16|7 pages

Idea Lists

chapter 17|25 pages

Digital and Mobile Story Mining

chapter 18|10 pages

Journalism Hackathon

chapter 19|69 pages

Field Notes

chapter 20|30 pages

The Sales Pitch

chapter |4 pages

Rebellious Reporter Child