Developing Story Ideas

So, less is better sums up what I learned in class today.  When your writing a story, the reader wants to know what your talking about from the jump, not 3 paragraphs deep in the article.  Developing the story idea seems to be the more difficult part for me.  In chapter 11, Holladay tells us that "The key to developing any idea into a story idea is to explore it with the right people. Stories always come from people."  I have been so stumped on finding a news-worthy topic to write about,  I think I may just resort to a poll.  What does everyone want to hear about?  What is everyone interested in?  Why are these questions so hard for people in our generation to answer?  I also learned that I really need to figure out this RSS asap, looks like it could definitely be of some help to my situation!