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Story Ideas
Not that your firm is wonderful, not that your mother adores you, and not that you go to your temple faithfully every week. Those are not stories; they're much more like advertisements.
So then, I repeat: What makes a good story? I'll provide some specific examples later in this talk, but first I'd like to offer some general ideas. A story may:
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Report something genuinely new
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Relate to today's breaking news. For example, if you're involved in health care, ask how your talents relate to pending health legislation
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Reflect the concerns of the media's readers/viewers
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Point to a trend in society or the economy. If you're an architectural firm, an engineering firm or a contracting firm -- or any kind of company or organization, actually -- do you have information about how trends are changing in your field? Can you release a survey? Can you talk about how your clients' preferences are changing?
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Highlight an unusual corporate strategy. Did your firm do something so exceptional as to produce truly remarkable changes in either your firm, your industry, or society at large?
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talk about a particular geographical region. Do you have useful information about how a neighborhood or city is changing?
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Spotlight a personal human interest story. For example, do you have an employee who faced up to a special emotional, physical or other challenge?
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I'll be illustrating some of these points with real-life examples shortly. In the meantime, let's assume that you do have a story idea. Before we address how you go about converting that idea into an actual story, we need to ask: In which media would you like that story to appear? To answer that, I'll mention some guidelines you should follow, which I will illustrate with ten real-life examples taken from the a/e/c field.
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