During a career in journalism spanning 33 years, Kevin Marsh was editor of BBC radio news programmes including Today, PM, World at One, World This Weekend and Broadcasting House. He became the first editor of the BBC College of Journalism in 2006 and retired from the corporation in March 2011.
Original and best
It's why we joined the business.
The phrase 'original journalism' is close to a tautology - or at least it should be. Journalism is all about telling people something new; something arresting; something that grabs their attention.
All journalists - even the ones we all admire - worry about how original they're actually being; where the next genuine story is coming from.
Original journalism takes skill - a skill you can learn but a skill that many in the trade think is becoming harder to practise.
Journalists have to produce more output now than they did even a few years ago and the pressure to produce can persuade you that the job is all about processing and not very much about finding out or investigating.
Plus, the vast amount of information and misinformation that is accessible now through the web can be a major barrier to anyone trying to get at the truth.
Mindset and habits
Originality takes work, time and application. It means hard work - not just for a few days but continuously. It might mean a change of mindset and almost certainly means a change of habits. The choice is yours.
Curiosity
Without your curiosity turned up to full, you're wasting your time. Curiosity is where story-finding starts.
"If you have never come to work with a story that is your own, you need to start practising the art of story-finding."
The blunt advice from the BBC Belfast team; one of whom remembers an editor who used to:
"...walk the length of a street and issue the challenge that, in a 500-yard stretch, he could find more stories than anyone else - the amount of litter, the standards of parking, the number of new cars, traffic wardens, cafes full of people smoking because it's banned in the workplace, shops opening/closing, beggars with histories, building sites. How often do we pass building sites and never ask: 'What are you building?'."
Another editor put it like this:
"You need to be so curious about everything that you can't look at a blank wall without wondering how it got blank."
Ask why... and then why not.
So how do you exercise your curiosity muscle?
You practise, of course. But be warned: if you get it right you will turn into a potentially annoying and irritating human being.
You're looking to develop the mindset that makes it impossible for you to listen to someone or to read a newspaper or magazine, or even walk down the street, without thinking 'that looks/sounds strange' or 'I wonder what that's really about?'
Force yourself to think of all the questions you can that aren't answered by what you've just seen or heard or read.
Practise on the 'news in brief' sections of newspapers - take the shortest ones you can find and make yourself ask all the questions the nib doesn't answer.
Listen to your reactions
Listen to your initial reaction to any story or event.
Take one brief moment away from impartiality to kick-start your thinking. What's your first reaction or first thought? Will other people think that? What happens when you challenge that reaction? Where does it take you?
And practise as you deal with the everyday - the chances are you'll spot something or make a connection everyone else has missed.
BBC2 Newsnight's Michael Crick advises: "Even when doing everyday, seemingly pedestrian reprocessing stuff, constantly ask: 'What can I say that's new to the story?'."
The great thing about kick-starting your original thinking in this way is that you don't need to know anything. Just to wonder and be curious. One senior editor remembers his days as an attachee on his first assignment at a local radio station in the North of England:
"I hadn't a clue. I didn't know the town; had no contacts; didn't know where to start. Then, the Prime Minister - it was Mrs Thatcher at the time - announced a trade embargo on the Soviet Union following the invasion of Afghanistan.
Didn't seem to have much to do with my patch at the time - then I tried to put myself in the position of a local business.
I cold-called the chief executive of the biggest exporter in the town. He was livid and a local Tory [party] bigwig to boot. The interview led our bulletins; follow-ups led the local papers and regional TV."
You can learn more about original journalism from the BBC College of Journalism website. The site is free to licence fee payers within the United Kingdom but you will be charged to access most of the content if you are outside the UK.
