Finding that potential link to a good story

 

 

Over the past ten days I have vigorously searched through many websites, blogs, newsletters, RSS feeds (using Google reader and Del.icio.us), and online newspapers in order to find that potenial link to a good story. The one question I found myself asking again and again is “how do I recognise a link that could lead to a story?” as to whether I found the answer remains open for discussion, none the less I attempted to try and make some contacts to seek out such potenital.                                                           

My first stop was creating a group on Facebook titled ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’  encouraging friends and others through twitter to join the group. With participants being less than enthusiastic I posted a discussion about Mozambique’s livelihood reaching a critical stage as an increasing demand for fish placed great strain on Mozambicans way of life. With no potential leads I turned my attention to Globalvoicesonline.org.

Numerous bloggers posted daily either surrounding my particular topic or along similar lines. I discovered some real good bloggers on this site, just to name a few Ndesanjo Macha, Julianna Rotich, Jennifer Brea, and Muhammad Karim. Feeding to each blogger allowed for me to learn a lot more about Sub-Saharan Africa and lead to more findings that affectively lead to a potential story. Other useful sites I came across include African Path, Afrol News, African Press Agency, All africa, World Bank, USAID, The Sub-Saharan Informer, UN News Centre, Environment South Africa, and Panda.org. Throught the whole process of subscribing and tagging I posed myself another question to which I’m still anxiously craving an answer to ” Is a journalist only as good as its sources?” To help find the answer look out for my next blog which will be a draft of my first article ‘ Endangering the young, as fighting continues in Somalia’.