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Krulwich, a correspondent with ABC News, has covered an array of topics ranging from AIDS to Bosnia to the worlds of the papparazzi and hip-hop music.

Even the best writer can find it hard to get a reader's interest when the story seems foreign to the reader. Is there a hook, some common ground or relatively unknown link, that might get someone interested in a subject?

"The best stories reach us on some elemental level. They talk about a mother's love for her children, a husband's pride in his country…There's something very important that's always going on in a very simple way in good stories." NBC correspondent John Larson

The people are cardboard, names and faces fit into a journalistic template, the investigating officer, the pro-life protester, the conservative Republican, the liberal Democrat.

For each story, before you start your reporting, when you are just conceptualizing coverage, begin this way:

Though all reporting involves investigation, what we have come to understand as investigative journalism adds a moral dimension. It engages the public to come to judgment about the disclosure and implies that the news organization considers it important - worthy of special effort. In that sense, investigative reporting involves not simply casting light on a subject, but usually making a more prosecutorial case that some- thing is wrong.

This form of watchdog reporting is a more recent development and has become increasingly common. The reporting develops from the discovery or leak of information from an official investigation already under way or in preparation by others, usually government agencies. It is a staple of journalism in Washington, a city where the government often talks to itself through the press.

Probably the best-known type of watchdog reporting, original investigative reporting involves reporters themselves uncovering and documenting activities that have been previously unknown to the public. This is the kind of investigative reporting that often results in official public investigations about the subject or activity exposed, a classic example of the press pushing public institutions on behalf of the public.

As firmly as journalists believe in it, the watchdog principle is often misunderstood. At the turn of the century, Chicago journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne translated the watchdog principle to mean "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Dunne was half kidding, but the maxim has stuck.