I tell my students that it’s the hardest thing we do: Find a good story. So when three of the reporters in class had enterprise stories — not done even by the commercial media in town — we debriefed each reporter. How had he or she found that story?
One came from looking at a calendar source, Zapaday. And that’s my tip of the day. This free online calendar combines events of all types of topics — from history to politics to the arts.
Last week it said that Sony was expected to beat Microsoft and premier its next generation Play Station, PS4, on February 20. The student, John Tummino, saw the post and pitched the story for that day. He interviewed a gaming prof and a retailer and came up with a good angle — that the new PS4 didn’t have the greatest business plan and in fact, sales might hurt other Sony products.
So check out Zapaday for tips on what is coming up in the future. It surely won’t work every day, maybe not once a week, but one day they’ll be something that clicks.
The other enterprise stories came from a posting on facebook and a search of new bills introduced in the state house.