35 5.1 What’s the Angle?

You arrive in your newsroom and the editor stops by to say, “ There’s going to be a decision about the expansion of the light rail line. We need something for the local section.”

At the morning strategy meeting for the railroad company client your strategic communications firm represents the account manager says, “Our client is concerned that people aren’t thinking positively about traveling by train. We need some ideas.”

For each of these scenarios, the topic is transportation by rail. But depending on the audience that might be identified as the target for the message, the angle of that broad topic could be very different.

Let’s play through scenarios for news and strategic communications.