Purpose
Turn a beat or topic area into 30 concrete, reportable story angles — each with a working headline, the specific reporting move to confirm it, and the first sources to call — so writers never face an empty budget meeting and small teams can find scoops hiding in public data, routine meetings, and overlooked community shifts.
When to Use
Invoke this skill when the user asks to:
- Come up with story ideas for a specific beat (city hall, schools, business, housing, crime)
- Break out of repetitive coverage — "we keep writing the same three stories"
- Fill a weekly or monthly editorial calendar for a local newsletter or outlet
- Find angles on a single event, budget line, or dataset that others will miss
- Pitch fresh stories to an editor or generate ideas for a freelancer
- Localize a national trend for their specific town or region
Inputs Required
Before starting, collect:
- Beat or topic area: The subject the angles should cover (e.g., "school board," "downtown small business," "county housing")
- Town or region: The specific place these stories are set
- Audience: Who reads this — subscribers, residents, a niche community
- Format constraints: Newsletter blurb / full article / investigative / broadcast — affects scope
- Recently covered: 2–4 stories already run so angles don't repeat
- Available data or documents: Any budgets, meeting minutes, records, or datasets the writer already has access to
- Timeliness need: Evergreen ideas vs. tied to an upcoming event, meeting, or season
If audience or format is missing, assume an engaged local newsletter readership and default to full-article scope, noting the assumption.
Instructions
Generate 30 Story Angles Across 8 Reporting Lenses
For each angle, include three elements:
- Working headline: A specific, filled-in headline for this town and beat — not a template
- The reporting move: The one concrete action that confirms or kills the story (which record to pull, who to interview, what to count)
- First calls: 1–2 specific source types to contact first
Lens 1 — Follow the Money (5 angles) Budget lines, contracts, grants, salaries, tax breaks, and where public dollars actually go.
- Look for the gap between what was promised and what was spent
- Compare this year's line item to last year's, or this town's to a neighbor's
- Reporting moves lean on: budget documents, contract awards, salary databases, campaign finance filings
Lens 2 — Public Records Dig (5 angles) Stories that live inside documents most people never request — meeting minutes, permits, inspection reports, court filings, FOIA-able correspondence.
- The angle is often a pattern across records, not a single document
- Frame as "what the records show" — the document is the proof, not the pitch
- Reporting moves lean on: records requests, permit databases, inspection logs, court dockets
Lens 3 — Human Interest & Profile (4 angles) The person behind the policy, the trend, or the institution. Puts a face on an abstract shift.
- Find the individual whose life embodies a larger change
- Avoid the obvious "beloved local figure" — look for the unexpected protagonist
- Reporting moves lean on: sustained interviews, day-in-the-life observation, community referrals
Lens 4 — Trend Spot & Data Pattern (4 angles) Something changing quietly across the region — closures, openings, price shifts, demographic moves — visible only when you count it.
- The angle is the trend line, not the anecdote; anecdote illustrates it
- Localize national trends by checking whether the local numbers match or diverge
- Reporting moves lean on: counting instances, pulling census or economic data, canvassing a stretch of storefronts
Lens 5 — Accountability & The Gap (4 angles) Where a promise, rule, or responsibility isn't being met — and who is affected.
- Structure: what was supposed to happen → what's actually happening → who bears the cost
- Keep it specific and provable; avoid vague "the system is broken" framing
- Reporting moves lean on: comparing official commitments to outcomes, interviewing the affected, requesting compliance records
Lens 6 — Explainer & "How It Works" (3 angles) Demystify a confusing local process, decision, or institution readers deal with but don't understand.
- Pick something readers actively wonder about — how a permit gets approved, why the road project stalled
- The service angle is the value: readers finish knowing how to act
- Reporting moves lean on: walking a process step-by-step with an official, mapping who decides what
Lens 7 — Overlooked Community & Underreported Voice (3 angles) A neighborhood, group, or institution your outlet routinely misses.
- Ask: whose experience of this beat never makes it into coverage?
- Go to where the community already gathers rather than waiting for a press release
- Reporting moves lean on: on-the-ground reporting, community organization contacts, non-English or non-institutional sources
Lens 8 — Counterintuitive & Second-Day (2 angles) The story everyone else missed on a big local event — the angle that runs after the obvious coverage fades.
- Ask: what did the initial coverage assume that might be wrong?
- Look for the unintended consequence, the quiet winner, or the question left unanswered
- Reporting moves lean on: re-reporting the "settled" story, checking who benefits, following up weeks later
Then: Rank the Top 5 for This Cycle
After generating all 30, name the 5 strongest angles for this specific outlet right now, ranked. For each, give one sentence on why it beats the others — timeliness, exclusivity, reader relevance, or reporting feasibility. Be decisive.
Output Format
- Structure: 8 labeled lenses with numbered angles under each; every angle formatted with Working headline → Reporting move → First calls; a ranked Top 5 at the end
- Length: 1,200–1,600 words
- Format: Scannable list — angles as tight structured blocks, not prose paragraphs
- Sections: All 8 lenses in order → Top 5 ranked picks
- Tone: Sharp, curious, entrepreneurial newsroom voice — the way a hungry editor talks in a budget meeting; concrete over clever
Quality Checklist
Before delivering output, verify:
- [ ] All 30 angles are present (count them across the 8 lenses)
- [ ] Lens counts match exactly (5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2)
- [ ] Every angle includes a working headline, a reporting move, and first calls
- [ ] Headlines name the actual town and beat — no bracket placeholders or generic phrasing
- [ ] No angle repeats a story listed as "recently covered"
- [ ] The Top 5 is ranked and each pick has a stated reason it wins
Notes
- The reporting move is what separates an idea from a pitch — if you can't name the record to pull or the person to call, the angle isn't ready
- Follow the Money and Public Records Dig produce the most defensible scoops for small teams; Explainer and Trend Spot produce the most shareable newsletter items
- When the writer has data or documents in hand, weight the generation toward Lenses 1, 2, and 4 — the material is already there to confirm the story fast
- Second-day angles (Lens 8) are the cheapest exclusives available: everyone had the same first-day story, so the outlet that asks the next question owns the follow-up
How to use this skill
This file is a Claude Code skill in Anthropic's standard format — markdown with YAML frontmatter at the top.
Installing in Claude Code:
~/.claude/skills/<folder-name>/SKILL.md— auto-loads in every session anywhere on your machine (recommended for skills you'll use across multiple projects)<your-project>/.claude/skills/<folder-name>/SKILL.md— auto-loads only when working in that project (recommended for project-specific skills)
Restart Claude Code or open a new session to register.
Using in Claude.ai, ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI tools:
- Drag this file into a new chat, or copy and paste its contents
- Send your task or request as your next message — the AI will apply the skill where it fits
For Claude Code skill details: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/skills