I Went to Paris and All I Got Were Lousy Story Ideas

by Annye DeGrand

Just because things are foreign, doesn't mean they are interesting.


Everything is interesting in France, right? I mean, for the first few days of being there, it was pretty much overload in the 'new and interesting' department. With so many new things to see, do, experience, take in, and enjoy—the inspiration is definitely not lacking in the City of Light.

Yet, every story idea I came up with, I couldn't help but feel as if anything I had to say would do any justice to the experiences of my travels. Not only that but with so much going on, how was I going to narrow down my topic ideas to a single piece worthy of 500 words?

The Best Advice

If there is a single most important thing I've learned in journalism school, it is to write about what you know. Yet, unfortunately my list of things I know about French culture and society is quite limited. However, one of the topics that made my list is something I feel quite passionate and serious about. Something I do quite well at myself, and would love to learn more about. That topic? Why, shopping of course.

But isn't shopping one of those ‘been there, done that’ topics? How can you learn more about shopping? I needed an angle. I needed something to make shopping timely—after all, people have been shopping for centuries.

Thinking Inside the Box

Looking for my angle, I thought about what is going on with shopping in America—which is something I'm obviously familiar with. Then I realized people aren't doing a lot of shopping today. For one reason: The word that has rung around the world—economy.

So what do you get when you mix the hottest topic in U.S. news with a tried and true past time of people everywhere?: A solid article on the effects of the economy on shopping in Europe, particularly France and Paris today.

Now that the hard part was done, all I had left to do for the rest of my trip was to "research." Which means I'm allowed to do lots of shopping . . . right?