If there’s one thing I enjoy doing every day when I rise, it’s reading the newspapers. In years past, I would run out to the corner newsagent and spend a small fortune on print newspapers, but these days, all the news is online and free.

This has personally encouraged me to spread my wings a bit and start reading newspapers which I normally wouldn’t have read if I had to pay for them.

The quality of British newspapers varies a great deal but there are three which are guaranteed to inspire story ideas and inspiration in general.

1. The Guardian – Generally considered to be leaning to the left politically, the Guardian has long been dismissively looked upon as the newspaper for liberals, intellectuals and professor-types with patches on their jacket elbows. But to say that would be to ignore the well written, engaging, interesting stories that the Guardian consistently puts out.

And contrary to some of their rivals, the Guardian has not hunkered down behind a pay wall, only letting people in for a fee. In fact they have gone in the other direction, embracing the Internet and social media, and bringing out their own smart phone apps.

2. The Daily Telegraph – My all-time favourite newspaper, this is the paper which produces some fantastic investigative journalism. The Telegraph has often been nicknamed “The Torygraph” because of its close associations with the Conservative Party. But this is the paper that blew the lid on the parliamentary expenses scandal which led to the resignations / retirements of half the parliament, as well as forcing the prosecutions of four MP’s.

Now everyone in Britain knows the Telegraph and every politician now treads much more lightly these days. The Telegraph also produces a lot of fascinating human interest stories.

3. The Daily Mail – Normally I wouldn’t include a tabloid newspaper but I have to confess a slight guilty pleasure for reading the Daily Mail. This British newspapers is mocked relentlessly by comedians for its sensationalist approach to stories and their obsession with pointless irrelevant details (“16 year old girl murdered at 800,000 pounds home”) and you should take what they say with a huge pinch of salt.

However, browsing their website can take hours as you click from one story to another. The easy way in which the stories are written make them easy to scan without too much brain power being consumed. And I have found many story ideas from perusing the Daily Mail, mainly how NOT to write something!!

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Mark O’Neill is a freelance writer of 20 years experience, and also the managing editor of MakeUseOf.com, since August 2007. You can see his personal website at markoneill.org Mark has 21 post(s) at Free Writing Center