A list of story ideas for Iowa high school student newspapers and yearbooks

I had a good discussion today (Thur. Oct. 29) with a roomful of Iowa high school students who are part of their school newspaper paper or school yearbook. This was part of an annual Iowa High School Press Association conference at the University of Iowa.

My topic: Generating story ideas: No excuses.

I put the students through an exercise, during which they split into groups and shared answers to:

• What are people talking about most at your school?
• What are the next big events coming up at your school?

The result: a list of story ideas for any high school newspaper, generated by students in just 15 minutes:

• Upcoming sporting events.
• Upcoming plays.
• Spectacular events at school that people will talk about for a long time.
• Differences between big and small schools.
• Why do kids transfer to other schools?
• What affect do transfers have?
• How do policies vary from school to school?
• People talking about other people at other schools
• Drug use among students.
• Clubs at the schools.
• Any alumns running for public office?
• Controversy: some exists over T-shirts at Cedar Rapids Jefferson High School.
• What different school serve at lunchtime.
• Special lunchroom offerings, such as healthy choice and vegetarian.
• Class sizes, and how they vary at different schools.
• Feature page on hot rods.
• Feature page on fashions.
• Profiles of students.

Here is the slide show, for those of you ambitious enough at the conference to remember that I'd say

I'd post them. They are in a different format than the one I used in the presentation, but serviceable.