Asking journalists’ questions

Journalists’ questions begin with what is known as the ’5W’s and 1H’ interrogatives:

• Who?
• What?
• Where?
• Why?
• When?
• How?

You can approach your task by listing as many journalists’ questions about your topic as you can. Questioning encourages you to look at a topic from many different perspectives, and may help you to narrow the issue that you are investigating. Journalists’ questions are especially useful when your task involves much factual information, because they actually force you to answer them by providing specifics rather than open-ended or ambiguous statements.