ABSTRACT
A reporter could lay out pages of detailed facts, but an editor will still ask: "What's the story?" Editors don't want a fuzzy idea or confusing statistics. San Francisco is one of the most liberal cities in the country; to many, being called a Republican there is an affront. A reluctant editor will want to know that journalist's project won't turn into a time-consuming mess or end up as a 5,000-word diatribe. Many good investigative stories lack an obvious time element. When that happens, journalist need to push story forward. While an editor might have a difficult time understanding why journalist want to investigate a long-standing local problem now, he or she can understand why journalist would want to localize a state or national issue currently in news. Provide a list of sources journalist plan to rely on. If journalist intend to base journalist's story primarily on interviews, journalist need to estimate how numerous, diverse and credible they will be.
