Freelance writers, especially new ones, how do you find stories to cold pitch?

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Check out HARO, they connect you with experts to help you tell stories, https://www.helpareporter.com/

Gotta exhaust every avenue of information available to you. Do you have connections with any PR companies? Do you know anyone in the industry? You can search online for events to cover firsthand. Meet people and get their first hand accounts

Social media is your friend. Once you come up with a concept, you can go online and post something like "Hey people who do X, I'm looking to hear about your experiences to do Y" and then you can easily learn more about your idea and flesh it out into something you can pitch

You got the entirety of the internet at your disposal to use as inspiration. Pick some topic you like and see what the experts in that field are talking about, get an idea of where the conversation is being held, what is being discusses, and how you can push it forward. Talk to people, read articles, attend events, and write stuff down whenever you can

I suggest you check out this article, it's pretty thorough so there should be at least one thing in it that you can start doing yourself: https://linksourcery.com/blog/how-do-journalists-find-stories/

The Internet of course

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