After the New Year's Eve festivities have been covered, what's left for your Jan. 1 newspaper? How about Jan. 2, or worse -- Monday?
A couple of ideas to get you through the post-holiday lag:
-- New laws often take effect Jan. 1, so find out what will affect your readers. Think state, city/town, county and township. If nothing major will take effect this Jan. 1, look back at the laws that started Jan. 1, 2010, and follow up on their enforcement and results.
-- If you haven't already done a Census story, or want to do a deeper one, the first week of the year may be a good time. Some ideas.
-- Go back in your archives and see what stories you wrote last year at this time. Follow up with anything you can: for instance, later in January many GateHouse-area readers helped Haitians after their earthquake, many were facing another year of unemployment or were facing foreclosure while banks were getting a bailout, and by the end of the month, many with Toyotas were worried about recalls over accelerators sticking.
Have other ideas? I'd love to hear about them -- e-mail me, and I may include them in a future GHNewsroom post.
After the New Year's Eve festivities have been covered, what's left for your Jan. 1 newspaper? How about Jan. 2, or worse -- Monday?
A couple of ideas to get you through the post-holiday lag:
-- New laws often take effect Jan. 1, so find out what will affect your readers. Think state, city/town, county and township. If nothing major will take effect this Jan. 1, look back at the laws that started Jan. 1, 2010, and follow up on their enforcement and results.
-- If you haven't already done a Census story, or want to do a deeper one, the first week of the year may be a good time. Some ideas.
-- Go back in your archives and see what stories you wrote last year at this time. Follow up with anything you can: for instance, later in January many GateHouse-area readers helped Haitians after their earthquake, many were facing another year of unemployment or were facing foreclosure while banks were getting a bailout, and by the end of the month, many with Toyotas were worried about recalls over accelerators sticking.
Have other ideas? I'd love to hear about them -- e-mail me, and I may include them in a future GHNewsroom post.
