The document discusses various strategies and techniques for generating story ideas and developing news stories, particularly for online journalism. It emphasizes engaging audiences through crowdsourcing, which involves gathering information from large groups of people. Several real-world examples are provided of news organizations that have successfully used crowdsourcing methods by inviting reader contributions and feedback. The document also outlines key questions journalists should ask themselves when developing a story idea, such as determining why the story is newsworthy and who the target audience is.

1. Get Up Off Of Your Ideas University of North Texas Department of Journalism Online Journalism 3340 February 12, 2008

7. Where Do You Begin? Today: It’s a Two-Way Street Feedback pages Readers suggestions to editors, specific reporters Message boards ( NOLA.com ) Readers post comments everyone can read Chat Rooms A dialogue among readers Online polls ( cnn.com , foxnews.com , Boston Globe ) Instant non-scientific reaction to stories, subjects E-mail Reporters/Editors contact info published

8. Where Do You Begin? New Reservoirs of Ideas Groups (Yahoo!, Google, others) Formerly ‘Usenet’ – broad range of subjects Blogs ( USAToday , NYPost , Millions of them Search engines Find sources, studies, special interests MySpace, Facebook, YouTube! Personal webpages … from human interest to the absurd Tech Sites CNet , Mobile News , TechWeb

16. Story Mapping Source: http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=17432

17. ‘ Story Tree’ Source: http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=17432