What Newspapers and Magazines Can Teach You about Finding Content

February 9, 2017 Teresa Clark

Off

Welcome to my blog! If you would like to keep updated on new posts, please subscribe.
And consider following me on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

Newspapers and magazines produce some of the most unique and well researched content in the world. As a rule of thumb, content in newspapers usually is more carefully checked than content found on the online. Newspapers and magazines consistently produce highly unique content that’s unlike anything that’s ever been published. How do they do that? Here are three ways newspapers and magazines find great content:

Interviewing real experts – Instead of looking through medical websites, journalists actually contact well-known doctors to ask for their opinions. If a journalist is doing an article on a particular car, he or she might call the car manufacturer or a plant manager to talk about how the car was built. As a blogger or other small publisher, you might not be able to command the same respect as a New York Times reporter, but you’ll be surprised at how many people are willing to give free advice if you just ask.

Using books and offline publications – Another common source of information for print journalists is books and other publications, especially academic papers, research papers, and official studies. By researching studies and books written by experts in a particular field, you can get a much more in-depth look into subjects that you just can’t get from browsing websites.

Consulting the public at large – You might be surprised at how much information can be gleaned from the public at large. Granted, this doesn’t work for skill-intensive subjects, like medicine or law. But for many subjects, the public can be a great resource for content. For example, if you operate a financial blog and you want to write a post about how rent control affects the economy, where might you go? Yes, you can research academic theories about rent control. You can Google “rent control” and see what has been written online about the subject. But one fascinating place you could look is everyday people who actually live in rent-controlled places. Talking to just a handful of these people can give you more insight into how rent control really affects people instead of reading a dozen articles online.

As you can see, newspaper and magazine writers tend to get their information from different sources compared to most online writers. Granted, these methods of researching content take more time and effort. However, if you’re willing to put in that time and effort, you’ll be able to create content that will blow your competition out of the water.