Firstly, it is important that you are looking in the correct place. Make sure that the article is a news story, not a commentary or blog giving the opinion of an author. In addition, the topic should be focused on an aspect of the syllabus, but make sure it does not already totally explain the economics behind the topic as you will just end up repeating the article.
Micro: The main IB economics micro topics are elasticities, taxation and subsidies, market failure and theory of the firm. Theory of the firm is a higher level topic, so stay clear of this if you are a standard level student. The easiest articles to write about would be those including taxation, subsidies or market failure because those are taught extensively in the course, lend themselves well to real world examples and have diagrams that are easy to explain.
Macro: The main IB Economics topics in macro are unemployment, inflation, interest rates, distribution of income and demand and supply side policies. An easy way to find an article is choose a topic you would like to write about and search the topic in google news. For example, if I would like to debate if demand or supply side policies are the most effective way of improving employment rates, I might look for news on youth unemployment or unemployment figures.
Here is a nice article on ‘Obamacare’ which is a good example of an article providing a topic which you can apply economic theory to and has not done any of the analysing already. Here you would discuss correcting a positive consumption externality and is a much more interesting example than the usual market failure topic of smoking.
Once you have chosen the article, you need to think about how to plan the essay. Do not jump straight in. Write a plan thinking about what economics you are going to pull out of the article. Going on the Obamacare article, this is a rough plan that would help you get full marks.
Remember that your word count is only 750 words. Do not try and say everything in flowery language, precise and to the point is much more effective. When writing the essay, use the mark scheme. The Internal Assessment is in five areas:
After you have written your essay, read over it, get someone else to read over it and do not get offended if they pick up lots of errors. If you still need some help, you could contact one of our IB Economics tutors to help you out.