Asking the journalist’s questions

Asking questions about your topic can help you generate relevant ideas and make sure that you have adequately surveyed your subject.

The most general types of questions are those asked by journalists when they’re gathering material for a story. Asking a journalist’s questions might help you get started and help you gather all your facts:

Journalist’s questions

One student, whose subject was the negative reaction in 1915 to D. W. Griffith’s silent film The Birth of a Nation, began exploring her topic with this set of questions:

You can tell she is already on her way to an interesting paper that presents a historical analysis of a cultural event.

Related topics:

Reading

Annotating texts or visuals

Talking and listening

Listing

Clustering

Freewriting, keeping a journal, and blogging

Asking questions in the disciplines