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What does a step by step journalistic process look like for researching a story? #Spring25

I plan on going into the field of journalism and am curious about what the specific process is when researching a story on a daily basis. #Spring25

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Ayma’s Answer

Hi Jaidyn! I'm currently studying Journalism, and I write / broadcast a lottt of stories. Your research on a daily basis depends on what the story topic is, and what kind of story it is itself. Enterprise or Feature stories will require a lot of research and digging for you to do, whereas a typical news story will not need as much. For example, I just finished an enterprise story about urban heat islands in Las Vegas. This story wasn't based on any news event; I just know it's very hot in Las Vegas, and I wanted to explore if there was any reason for that other than its climate. So, I did a lot of research looking into why urban cities tend to be a lot hotter than rural areas sometimes, and that's when I learned about urban heat islands.

On the other hand, if you're just covering a car crash, or a crime scene, or a news event of any matter, you won't research as much. Your information will come from what you can clearly see happening, or from a press release.

There isn't necessarily a set process for researching, unless your place of work has a specific formula for you to follow. Really, you just start by looking up the information. To use my example from earlier again, some of the questions I would look up are--
Why is Las Vegas so hot?
Why are temperatures in urban cities rising?
How can heat be trapped onto buildings/asphalt?

Things like that. Once you have an established topic, the research questions should come to you naturally.
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