During one of my mentoring sessions, a mid-career journalist shared her frustration after unsuccessfully pitching what she believed was a strong cross-border story to several outlets. She felt that editors failed to recognize the topic’s relevance.

This is a common challenge: you identify an important cross-border subject, but struggle to demonstrate its significance, often because it seems too broad. So, how can you narrow it down?

The solution is straightforward: give your story a clear focus. There are various ways to do this, but I will share the approach I’ve found most effective —a process that involves two stages.

Untangle the Knot

Think of your story not as a standalone piece, but as an «umbrella» that brings together a constellation of related stories linked by a common thread. What are these stories, and can you identify each one?

Imagine you are exploring the expansion of data centers in Europe and their impacts. One approach could be to focus on a specific company and review its operations across multiple countries. You could also report on environmental issues, such as increased water or energy consumption. Given that data centers are usually established in rural regions, you could investigate how they might be inflating land prices and endangering local farmers’ livelihoods. Another possible angle could be to report on whether the job opportunities typically linked to such infrastructure projects have materialized.

After identifying the stories within the apparent chaos, map them and cluster together threads that share common themes.

Now you’re ready to dig into your cross-border investigation, tackling one story at a time. But how do you decide which story to pursue first? This is where you move to the next step.

Back to Basics

Ask yourself which parts of the story are essential, those that cannot be omitted. These elements form the most distilled version of your investigation. This is where your attention should be. Avoid getting sidetracked by secondary details.

If you have enough time, once your core story is ready, you can enhance it with additional aspects to give your audience a richer context.

Another way to expand on your core story is by planning a series of publications, using one of two approaches:

• After presenting the bigger picture to your audience, delve into a specific aspect of the story that illustrates your main point. Using the example of data centers, you could explain why their energy consumption leads to higher electricity bills for people living nearby.

• Alternatively, a more “horizontal approach” lets you emphasize relevance over depth. This means explaining to your audience why your story matters to them. Returning to our earlier example, you could compare the environmental costs of data centers with the benefits of the jobs they promise.

When you’re deeply involved in a subject, it’s easy to lose perspective and assume others, particularly editors, share your knowledge. The strategies I share here are based on my own experience and that of my mentees. I hope you find them useful. If you do, please let me know—I’d love to hear about you!