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PHOENIX -- In case you missed it, and you most certainly did, I recently gave the keynote speech at the Arizona Interscholastic Press Association conference.

Lots of high school kids. Lots of potential.

I get to give these talks every so often. I guess it's a sign that I'm no longer in high school looking up at a career in journalism. For this talk, I tried to channel a book I used to find comfort in, "Letters to a Young Journalist," by my former J-school professor Samuel Freedman.

In any case, my talk was called "Get the Story." And for the sake of brevity, I broke it down into three ideas.

1. Be brave. Put yourself in the right place to get the story.

For an amazing example of how to do this, check out Laura Sullivan's 2008 piece on prison overcrowding in San Quentin.

Of course, I also had to summon the intrepid border reporter, Michel Marizco, for the work he did in San Fernando this May covering the presidential elections.

2. Don't be afraid to dig in your own backyard.

Often great stories are right in front of us - in our own neighborhood - if we just take the time to listen to our intuition when we see something and think, "um...that's totally weird!"

Like the time I watched a tanning salon open in my neighborhood shopping complex during the recession. As I told the kids, I think the smallest stories usually always mean something much more.

In this case, the