If you only scratch the surface, you won’t find the best stories

The best stories to tell are the ones no one’s heard. They’re also the hardest to find - which is precisely why they’ve never been told.

They’re tucked away in places most of us don’t look. They live in the lives of people who don’t think their stories matter, or who’ve been too polite, too embarrassed or too private to say them out loud. Sometimes they’ve been silenced. Sometimes they’ve just been overlooked.

This is the slog of journalism. It’s also the mark of good communications - if we’re doing it properly.

Stories with weight and meaning don’t land in your lap. They take time and patience. You have to ask the right questions, then sit in the kind of silence that makes most people uncomfortable. You have to listen for the sentence that’s said in passing but carries the whole truth inside it. And you have to be ready to walk away with nothing if that’s all there is.

Once the story is found, the trick is to lead people to feel it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing for a newspaper, a policy paper or a prime-time slot - emotion is what carries a story home. It’s what makes a message stick long enough to change a mind or shift the ground under a public debate. And accuracy - always accuracy - is what gives it the longest life.

I’ve sat on both sides of the table. I know the effort needed to get something real and worth running. Yes, the best comms work packages a message. But more importantly, it carries something human and true. It speaks to people beyond the walls of the organisation or the ego of the person delivering it.

Good stories aren’t complicated. They’re crisp, sharp and impossible to shake. When you dig them out and tell them well, they stay with people. They spark ideas and shift the way we see each other.

So when a comms person or a journalist asks you to go the extra mile, take them seriously. Get the audio from earthquake ground zero. Stand in the rain a bit longer so the photographer can catch the right light. Back up the quote you know is “true” with the source that proves it.

Your story will stand out. And the newsroom, the cause and maybe even the world will be better for it.

By Ruth Lamperd, Account Manager at Jersey Road