A few people have told me they like the idea of being a features journalist, but worry about finding story ideas. Here are a few thoughts on that...

One story leads to another, especially in the digital world. Each feature is also a crowdsourcing opportunity. That’s why I always put my email or Twitter handle at the bottom of stories: people moved can get in touch...

You also find fresh stories while MAKING stories. Some of my best features have come from the research process of another story, or from striking up a conversation with a contributor: what is commonplace to them in their world, might be an amazing story to others...

You can obviously find great stories on social media: follow hashtags of topics you are interested in, parse obscure blogs and journals, browse things like Reddit, tho if a story is already going viral, why cover it (as another social media write up, like it’s a foreign country)

Obviously look around you and talk to people IRL - you should be curious by nature in the first place. If something makes you do a double take, question it and follow up...could be a story. Be intrigue-able.

Finally, you could be a successful features journalist and do none of that. There is a multi-million $ PR industry dedicated to feeding journalists feature ideas. I’d never dismiss them. A small % are great and bring amazing access, especially for business and tech. But...

...you wouldn’t be much of a features journalist if that is all you relied on - and you certainly wouldn’t be a particularly original one. Would you add any ways of finding stories? Pls below...