
This module is all about building news stories and working out what yours is.
If you are embarking on this module, it’s because we’ve told you what we think your story is.
Even though you know what your story is, we recommend quickly read through Step 1 so you get some background on what makes a good news story.
These examples are intended to get you thinking more laterally about the kind of stories that can work so you can spot one in future.
You may end up using a combination in one story and that’s totally fine.
PLEASE READ THROUGH EACH STORY TYPE BELOW
NOW IT'S TIME TO BUILD YOUR STORY
Now that you’ve quickly read through the types of story, it’s time for you to work out what yours is.
We will already have chatted about this in your video response and given you a good indication of what we think your strongest story angle is.
For future reference when you go through this process next time on your own, always put your story idea through the ‘so what?’ filter; would anyone care, is what I’m saying new, is it interesting and can I back it up?
We'll now show you how to build your story from the ground up and how to collate your assets.
We liken building a story to baking a cake. You need the right mix of ingredients to create the finished article.
Flour on its own isn’t a cake nor are eggs, butter or sugar, but put them all together with some know-how and you have a cake.
Likewise, your basic product message on its own isn’t a story, but add in some background on the problem your product solves and why people need it, a case study of someone using it to improve their world, some new research and data and a spokesperson and it’s starting to look a lot like a story a journalist would run.
So how do you go about building that strong story? Let's run through the elements. The last tab 'Example' shows you how a real client used this to work out the elements. At the very end, you can download the next worksheet.
WORKSHEET TIME
Fill in the worksheet to see how you can build your story.
It will help you work out what assets you already have to give the media and what you still need
to collate i.e. what’s your photo going to be; do you have some good statistics you can use?
You will use these answers to write your media release in the next step.
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