If you live in a small community, the
risk of thus offending is, of course, correspondingly greater.
The one safe way is to use the plot-germ, and _only_ the plot-germ,
taken from the item in the paper. If you can take the central idea and
remodel it so that the very reporter who wrote the original item would
not recognize it, you may legitimately claim to have produced an
original story. That is, moreover, what you _should_ do, leaving aside
all questions of your script's being accepted, and the possibility of
its being refused because of its similarity to one previously
purchased from some other writer.
The main incidents of a prominent court trial may supply you with an
idea for a strong, original story, but you should not think of
following the facts of the case just as they occurred in real life. To
_copy_ a story from a newspaper item and to _get_ a story from the
same source are two entirely different things. Press clippings, as an
author once remarked, "are not first aid to the feeble minded. They
are merely sign-posts that point the way to the initiated." And
another has said: "It is the art of seeing and appreciating just a
line or two in some newspaper item and working it up that makes
newspaper study pay."
The really practised writer realizes that the best plot-suggestions
are to be found in the shorter news items--the five-to-ten-line
fillers--and not in the big sensations of the day.
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