How to find and develop important news angles

Created on Friday, 13 January 2012

Published on Friday, 13 January 2012

Written by David Brewer

  

Exploring news angles

Seeking out new angles on a breaking, developing or running news story is an important part of the editorial process.

Journalists have a responsibility to think through and explain how news developments impact the lives of their audience.

This process usually takes place in news meetings where editorial staff discuss the implications of events in order to decide which deserve further investigation. These are called news angles.

How a story develops

News stories often break first on the news wires. Sometimes all we have is one sentence containing one fact. Over time we uncover more information and the story develops.

However the facts may sometimes be thin in terms of detail.

It's a bit like being handed the skeleton of a story and our job is to add flesh to the bones on behalf of those who expect us to publish or broadcast a comprehensive and informative report.

Researching behind the headlines

Let's take a news story that was running on BBC News Online in the site's Africa section on 12 Jan 2012, and let's imagine we are in a news meeting discussing how to move this story forward. What questions would we ask?

Here is the headline linking through to the story, Kampala shops shut over Uganda interest rates, and here are a few selected paragraphs with a few possible angles that could be explored.

The story reads:

Businesses in Uganda's capital, Kampala, have closed their shops and are boycotting banks to protest at high interest rates.

Possible angles:

What businesses? We need to talk to a few and find out how much they are likely to lose through the protest. How long can they continue without the banks? What are the alternatives? We need to know who their customers are and what they are going to do now the shops are closed.

The story reads:

A BBC correspondent says most shops are closed, leaving customers who travel to Kampala from across east Africa unable to stock up. Kampala is an east African trading hub and many of the people unable to shop have come from other parts of Uganda, as well as eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

Possible angles:

Where do these people come from and why? How do they get to Kampala? What are these goods that they are unable to buy? How are these goods usually transported back to the other areas of east Africa? What about those who make a living from transporting these people and goods? What are they going to do now? Can they survive?  What are the implications for locals? How are they coping without supplies?

The story reads:

Business owners also say for the next three days they will withdraw all their savings from commercial banks and stop making any deposits into their accounts.

Possible angles:

Where will they put their savings now? Are there alternative safe places to bank money? What are these alternatives and how easy is it to transfer funds? What is the possible long-term implication for businesses, the customers and the country's economy? Why are interest rates so high?

The story reads:

City traders have used this tactic before, in July last year, to protest over the country's weakened currency and the presence of cheap goods in Chinese shops.

Possible angles:

What happened last July? How long did the action last? What were the implications? Do we have any archive material? Can we do a compare and contrast of then and now?

Angles enrich news stories

So, from taking a fairly basic story we could develop more than a dozen related stories, each exploring the significance of elements in the original story in a way that could help the audience understand the possible impact of what is happening around them.

Try it for yourself

Exercise: Break into groups of three, examine a story currently running on one of the major news sites, and find at least 10 angles which you feel could be explored, explain why they should be explored and set out how you would follow up each of those angles including who you would talk to and what you would ask them.

  

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