Speech Topics

Watch, Read, and Listen to the Local News in Your Area to Find the Best Speech Topics

• Your local news media, including television, newspaper, and talk radio offer an abundance of speech topics that are sure not to bore an audience.The fact is, television stations, newspaper publishers, and radio stations must create enough daily appeal to keep their ratings – yet avoid stepping on advertising sponsors’ toes.

•  Therefore, only the ‘cream of the crop’ in the news makes it and much of choosing what is aired and printed has to do with how much the topic will resonate with the public.

•  Different news publishers have different demographics that describe their readership’s and listener’s ‘common threads’ such as: location, age, and education level are among the top descriptive categories of an audience.By having demographics fully understood, this also helps publishers and station managers weed out content that could be considered inappropriate for its audience.

Great Speeches and Speech Topics are Targeted to the Audience

•  Think about this: television anchors can do an entire ‘speech’ within a minute or two. Television news is a batch of “little speeches” that answer ‘who, what, why, how, and when’.

•  When formulating your speech, you need to address these questions as well in order to avoid leaving your audience confused and with more questions.

•  Look closely to how the news is delivered; are who, what, how, why, and when addressed? Of course it is because professional journalists know instinctively how to answer those questions—they same questions their audience would have.

•  This is why most journalists begin their news coverage with a statement such as, “On October 5, 2009, a young boy of the St. Martin area accidentally fired his father’s rifle, killing a prize horse,” for example.

The Best Speech Topics are Often Found in Questions

Using the above example of a boy accidentally shooting a prized horse, what questions come to mind? Brainstorm on paper as if you were doing an interview with the family. How did the boy get a hold of the rifle? Has the boy had mental problems or disobedience issues? Why wasn’t the rifle more securely stored?

1. Ask these questions and you will wind up with several potential speech topics such as:

2. Should parents be fined for unsecured weapons? Should minor children be banned from using weapons at family gatherings (e.g. target practice)?…and so forth.

3. Paying close attention to the local news (as well as international news) can lead to great speech topics from questions that still remain.

Many speech topics can exist right in the schoolyard.

• For example, dress codes make for great speech topics; what dress codes do you feel are unfair? Are students prohibited from wearing body art such as tattoos and piercings? Who made up the rules? Do school dress codes violate civil rights?

• Other speech topics that can found at school can be written around:

1. Cafeteria and snack foods: healthy or not? Is it cheaper and healthier to bring your lunch and snacks from home?

2. Is the playground safe?

3. Should your school be “locked down” during school hours?

• If you are asked to give a speech at work, usually these speeches are focused on motivation, leadership, and success but speech topics can also be focused on employer/employee issues.

• Persuasive speeches can serve as a catalyst for change and are gaining momentum as the ‘peaceful way’ to speak out on issues that frustrate workers and employers. However, the most effective speech topics cast a positive light on potential solutions after identifying the problem.

• Such speech topics often then lead to ‘water cooler’ chats about positive solutions instead of being focused simply on the existing problem.

• Motivational speeches can be effectively written around an impacting quote and then geared toward the issue. “Rome wasn’t built in a day” can lead to “Positive steps for ABC Company to Consider with Cost Reduction.”

• Speeches that are written entirely based from one’s own perspective are usually not well-accepted.

• You want your speech to speak to your audience and show facts and figures that substantiate your position on the topic. You also want to be sure to show the other side of an argument or issue and explain why those explanations are not the best solutions.