Comments on: Five Tools to Super Charge Your Story Pitches

By: david

david — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 19:47:25 +0000

here is a good article in the New York Times about ways of finding people for your stories.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/technology/personaltech/25basics.html?src=me&ref=technology

By: Paul Mcgrath

Paul Mcgrath — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 19:21:30 +0000

great addition. adding that now.

By: Kev

Kev — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:25:50 +0000

Someone on the book of faces just pointed out http://www.trendingtopics.org/ for Wikipedia trending. ONe to add to the list.

By: Cameron A.

Cameron A. — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:24:52 +0000

What happens if a topic is unpopular, relative to whatever’s being searched or bandied about in social media, but is worthy enough to pass mention?

For breaking news and monitoring popular trends, yeah, Twitter and Google are helpful tools. They’re no substitute for knowing your fields of interest and anticipating what could be, rather than what is.

By: robert

robert — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:50:21 +0000

PS:

By far the best story on CBC radio last weekend was Mary Jane
Lamond singing Bryan Adams’ “Summer of 69″ in Gaelic on Go.

Now that was a pitch that was super charged.

By: robert

robert — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:42:23 +0000

Fair enough Paul.

You do say, “But these tools are not only useful for testing story ideas. They can also be used to come up with pitches.”

Based on your follow I realize you mean Twitter search, though that assumes you know what you’re searching for in the first place. (Although if you put “story idea” in Twitter search, you’ll get lots of them since so people are using it to pitch stories)

But don’t misunderstand me, I’m all for using modern tools to add some real data to the archaic story meeting.

Maybe the headline should have been :

“Online Tools to Help You Prove You’re Right and Your Assignment Editor Isn’t”

I would have read that.

By: Five reporting tools to check out « Kempton – ideas Revolutionary

Five reporting tools to check out « Kempton – ideas Revolutionary — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:29:18 +0000

[...] Five reporting tools to check out A few tools to check out for your reporters’ toolkit: “Five Tools to Super Charge Your Story Pitches“. [...]

By: Paul Mcgrath

Paul Mcgrath — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:31:00 +0000

robert, I never suggested you should use Twitter trending topics for pitches. That’s simply missing the point. I said “there are several tools on the internet that you can use to back up your story pitches.” If you want to go out into the community to figure out your story pitches, go for it. Regardless of how you come up with the idea, there are still online tools that can “provide a gauge of what the public is concerned about.”

As for the headline, I guess I could have written “Online Tools to Help with Gauging Public Sentiment About Story Ideas,” but then I doubt you would have clicked the link.

By: robert

robert — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:30:09 +0000

Trending on Twitter right now:

* Justin Bieber
* American Idol
* Brasil Is Saying
* Lady GaGa

I appreciate you’re trying to help, and it’s great to see tools other than reading the newspaper at the pitch meeting, but honestly, ‘super charge’ ?

Sure you should use whatever is available to see what’s going on – but ‘pitches by Google’ helps explain a lot of what is wrong with what’s on the radio today.

Try Super Charging your pitches by dropping the pitch meeting, getting out of the building, and spending more time in the community. Then by all means use those tools.

Otherwise, here’s tomorrow’s lineup:

* Justin Bieber
* Eclipse
* Chuck Norris
* Chile
* Mark Owen
* PlayStation Move
* Chile
* Conan O’Brien