Generating Ideas

What made you think?

Any time you're curious about or surprised by something, make a note of it. There's a good chance each one is a story.

Example

I was intrigued by a Twitter battle about male and female trees and explored the topic with data.

Change the geography

Take a story that was published on a national level and reproduce it at a state or county level, or attempt the same analysis for a different country. Alternatively, find a story done in a smaller or local paper and spin it into something larger.

Example

I took a national map of single people and zoomed in on NYC.

Update an older story

If a story came out five or ten years ago, things might have changed since then. Or not! Either one can typically be a story.

Example

Back in 2017 OpenNews published the results of data journalism salary survey, which would certainly be worth revisiting to see how things have changed.

Compare groups

Many times the rows of your dataset can be put into groups, and then the groups can be compared. This is possible if your rows have some sort of category that shows up multiple times.

Example

• If you have crimes in various cities, you can count the crimes in each city
• If you have people with job titles, you can calculate median salary for each job title
• If you have power plants with energy sources, you can sum the total CO2 produced by each energy source

Interview an expert

This one is either way more difficult or way less difficult than actually analyzing data, depending on where you're coming from.

For any concept or dataset you want to work with, there's probably someone who deals with it all the time. Whether it's their profession or a hardcore hobby, talking to them can provide insight and ideas that you'd never be able to come up with on your own. Think of it as interviewing a beat reporter who never writes stories!

If you don't have a specific topic or dataset in mind, sometimes this is as easy as talking to a friend who is passionate about a topic. They'll be happy to chatter on and on about the topic, and eventually you'll hit a "huh, that's interesting!" moment that you can spin into a story.