After boarding a Bolt Bus to New York City, I squeezed into an aisle seat beside a young Asian man and pulled out my laptop to do a little work. Something about riding on a bus or a plane helps me focus my energy. The motion and calming drone of the engine and AC, perhaps.
Before getting started I greeted my bus mate. He was traveling with his parents visiting from Xi’an in China. “It’s their first trip to New York City,” he said.
Soon I learned Wenbo Shi, an electrical engineer, is researching smart buildings as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard. Bleep. A light bulb went off. Chatting with my fellow traveler—a potential source—was more important than trying to finish my profile of a Mexican construction worker at 7:30 in the morning!
As we sped westward on I-90, Shi asked about my work. I told him about two energy stories I had written for Engineering News Record. Stories about construction of the Block Island Wind Farm, our nation’s first offshore wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island, and a Con Ed virtual [solar] power plant project. Then I asked about his research in smart grid communications and energy management.
Later I mentioned I had lived in Japan. This launched us into lively discussion about cross-cultural differences between Japanese, Chinese, and Americans. Before arriving in mid-town Manhattan, we exchanged business cards and Shi promised to email me info about an innovative energy project. That email arrived three days later.
There are many ways to develop story ideas, but meeting people like Shi face to face is one of the best ways to cultivate trustworthy sources who can lead you to news not found in polished press releases. While in Maine covering the launch of the Volturnus, the first grid-connected floating wind turbine in the Americas, I met the communications manager for Cianbro, the company that built the turbine’s lightweight concrete foundation. He later tipped me off to a new rivet manufacturing facility in Georgetown, Mass. not far from where I live. A week later I visited the facility where workers fashion hot-rolled steel into old-school rivets for the century-old Longfellow Bridge in Boston.
Newspaper and magazine articles, even tiny seemingly insignificant snippets, are another source for story ideas. While reading a print edition of the Boston Globe one weekend, I found a news brief about a floating bridge in the tiny town of Brookfield, Vt. Months later, I found that news clip and called the Vermont Agency of Transportation to get the scoop. Soon I learned that the innovative project was the topic of a presentation at an international conference of bridge engineers in Pittsburgh. After writing a story about the bridge for ENR, I pitched the idea to Composites World, which was interested in the bridge’s composite pontoon system. Later I visited Brookfield and wrote a travel story about the historic bridge for the Boston Globe. Now I’m curious how you have developed your best story ideas?