8 Step Guide to Researching Your News Article

You’ve got an idea for a news story that you know people want to read about. Perhaps you’ve seen something that’s piqued your interest and you want to look into it further. Maybe it’s a topic in your area of expertise that people should know about. Whatever’s inspiring you to write your piece, finding out enough to write a full, credible article can be daunting. That’s why we’ve put together a full 8 step guide on how to research a news article; all you have to do is follow them one by one:

1. Ask Yourself the 5 W’s: Who, What, Where, When and Why

Here are the types of questions you should be asking yourself:

• What happened in the past? What’s happening now? What could happen next? What should be happening?
• Who is involved? Who did it? Who’s affected by it? Who could be affected by it later?
• Where did it happen? Where could it happen next? Where are the sources from?
• When did it happen? When could something similar happen again? When is it going to start or end?
• Why did it happen? Why did it go wrong? Why did the people involved do what they did?

The most important question is ‘Why?’. Really channel your inner 8 year old who won’t stop asking ‘But why?’ after each answer.

2. Look at the scope of the story

An issue that affects one person might affect a lot more. It could be a whole group of people, an entire city or even an entire country. Journalists often use the phrase ’pulling the thread’. Pulling a thread and seeing what unravels is the epitome of investigative journalism. Look at how widespread the problem could be and what related issues are impacted by it.

3. Compare how something is supposed to work with how it ACTUALLY works

Nothing is perfect. Businesses aren’t perfect, governments aren’t perfect, and we all know people aren’t perfect. Organisations can do everything from making genuine mistakes to deliberately cutting corners and even breaking the law. Say you’ve heard that your local elected representatives have approved the building of brand new apartment blocks in your city. Then you find out that the company contracted to build them have been approved a lot quicker than is usual for this process. You realise this is not how the process is supposed to work. After speaking to local government employees involved, they provide you with evidence that rules were broken by giving the contract to the company without a bid. Not only that, but the owner of the company is related to one of the representatives in charge of planning.

Pulling the thread will inevitably lead to more questions that certain people in positions of power don’t want asked.

4. Find people affected by the issue

There’s no shortage of social media tools to get to the exact people you need to speak to. Create a list of relevant Facebook groups, Subreddits, Twitter accounts, Instagram pages, forums and anywhere most likely to have the people you need to speak to. Then go through it one by one. Create posts inviting people to reach out. Ask them if they’d like to speak to you or if they know anyone that would. Speaking to one source will likely lead to a referral to another. Ensure that you maintain communication with different sources as you may need to speak to them again in the future.

5. Be clear with sources about why you need the information

A key principle in journalism is transparency. Transparency with your audience and transparency with your sources. Make sure they know why you’re asking them the questions you’re asking. This will increase trust, another key principle in journalism, and potentially lead to them giving you more relevant information. They may do the opposite and feel like giving less away if they know why you need the information. This is to be expected and it’s your job as a journalist to try to get to the truth whilst being as transparent and honest as possible. We cover this more in our 6 rules for handling news sources.

6. Obtain relevant documents

Most organisations have documents available to the public such as companies quarterly reports or university research papers. Start by asking yourself exactly what you need and go and look for that specific thing first. Use google to start searching and keep a note of what else you see along the way. Look everywhere for these and find as much of it as you can. You can quote relevant parts of the document in the article as well as provide names of people to interview. They can also provide further article ideas. Certain documents may be difficult to obtain and the ones you do find may have false information, not tell the whole story or be out of date. The opposite may be true and you might end up with a long list of documents that you don’t know where to begin with. This leads us onto our next point…

7. Be organised and focused to prevent mistakes

The first question to ask yourself is what’s your angle? This just means what the report is going to be about and asking yourself if what you’re finding in your research supports what you thought it was going to be about. Then ensure everything is stored securely and in an organised way. Sort out the valuable facts. Evaluate the quotes to make sure they’re interesting enough and make sure they have names and dates. Always transcribe interviews and keep important documents. If you have missing pieces it means you need more reporting. Fill in what you don’t know with more facts, reporting and interviews. Don’t rest on weak facts; it will make a weak news report. To learn how to organise your news gathering properly, check out our 5 step guide.

8. Understand the risks involved so you can reduce them

In all kinds of reporting there’s always a risk of criminal charges, civil lawsuits and damage to reputation and credibility. This is especially true with undercover reporting. Before doing so ask if there are other ways to get the story. If it’s necessary to get to the truth, ask who will be deceived? Will innocent people be harmed? What will you tell your audience about your methods and what if there’s no story?

Bonus point: Be fair and balanced (these aren’t the same thing)

Fairness means inclusion of the other side, balance means how equally those sides are treated. All journalists are generally fair and include the other side in their reporting. However how equally those sides are treated depends on your angle and your biases. We all have our own views but keep them separate from your writing. The truth always matters the most.