Choose an angle and stay with it
The assignment may be given to you, but the precise direction of the reporting often remains your choice. That direction is the angle. It lets a reporter go deeply into one aspect of a subject instead of skimming across everything.
The essentials
Use the angle to create depth. Jean-Dominique Boucher identifies three useful guides: new information, facts observed in the field and the intended audience. The reader need not discover every aspect of a broad subject in one article. They need to understand the aspect you have promised to explore.
Begin on location with attention rather than a barrage of questions. Sense the place and understand the people before imposing your prepared questionnaire. Albert Londres valued this initial physical encounter with a new assignment. Silence is not inactivity: it gives observation a chance to correct the assumptions you brought with you.
Keep a disciplined notebook. Record new information, atmosphere, anecdotes and impressions, while distinguishing impressions from facts. Check names on location and reread your notes that evening while you can still complete them. Whatever Truman Capote claimed about memory, notes let you reconstruct a scene, attribute a statement and respond to a challenge. Sort material by its relevance to the angle, keeping unused details for future reporting.
Take it to the field
Write your angle in one sentence, then sort your notes into essential, useful and outside the story. Keep excluded material in the file. Removing it from this article does not mean losing it for future reporting.
Your turn
Choose a broad current subject such as an election, a shortage or the start of a school year. Write five possible angles in one sentence each. Select the one offering the most new information to your audience.