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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

Who?
What?
When?
Where?
Why?
How?

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:

Who objected to the film?
What were the objections?
When were the protests first voiced?
Where were protests most strongly expressed?
Why did protesters object to the film?
How did protesters make their views known?

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