ABSTRACT
Originally a reference to the use of a dry erase whiteboard to jot down ideas and brainstorm during meetings, “whiteboarding” has become a more elastic term for the activity of collaboratively generating and mapping ideas. This chapter helps writers find and create more, better ideas for their content projects during the all-important phase of whiteboarding and ideation. It provides a roadmap for finding and charting intelligence about the audience. Finally, in service to consistency, the chapter outlines how to begin developing a style guide. Baseball provides a handy metaphor for strategizing our content development and for how to think about longevity and impact of a particular story or story series. Reviewing the basic news values can also help generate story ideas and determine content utility for writers' audience. These values aren’t just for journalists; they apply to most audiences everywhere.
