Work a Beat

Nonfiction writers can develop story ideas by working a beat

Back in the late 1970s, a student graduated from our journalism school. He moved to Marin County in California right in the middle of Silicon Valley. He had some technical background along with his journalism degree. He started dropping by the public relations offices of the various tech companies picking up press releases about the new technologies and chatting with engineers, scientists, and executives. He rewrote and enhanced the press releases and sold the articles to both trade journals and general interest tech magazines. In the late 1970s, he was making $50,000 a year doing this.

He carved out a niche for his writing, by working a beat. This journalistic term refers to being proactive about visiting news sources in a given field regularly. Let's say you are a member of a particular church denomination. Once a month you can call or visit each church of that denomination in your area to see if they are doing anything that might be of interest to denominational magazines or local publications.

There's also a side benefit of this approach. Once you sell a few articles, these people will start calling you with tips, and sometimes they will hire you to do some work for hire. I was doing this for a while with some bed and breakfast Inns. I got several articles for travel and architecture magazines. Additionally, several inn operators hired me to write promotional materials for their inns. A side benefit of that beat was, if I showed up for breakfast, I ate well.

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