Journalism Education Archive
12 Sep 2013
If at first they do not learn, train, train again
Here are some words of encouragement for anyone asked to train people in a newsroom: You will fail. Within weeks after your training is complete, you will realize that some people are doing poorly at whatever you taught them. Some are doing the opposite of what you said. And some aren’t doing it at all.
11 Sep 2013
Don’t teach the tool; teach the task
The worst training sessions I’ve had to endure mostly consisted of the so-called trainer plodding through something — let’s say, a website stats tool — in a presentation that was more like an inventory than a lesson. Every button and every option was listed and explained. Two hours later, we students would emerge not much
10 Sep 2013
When training your newsroom, fear the experts
Is your newsroom offering training in digital reporting? Are you considering doing so, and looking for trainers? Here’s my advice: Beware of experts. What I’m talking about are one-topic specialists: the SEO genius, the group that’s produced sterling video documentaries, the social media consultant with 20,000 followers. They may know everything there is to know
29 Aug 2013
How to get past the print-first mindset
Well, there goes one “grass is always greener” belief. Newsrooms that want to adapt to digital ways can find that it’s hard to get their journalists to think about online until it’s almost too late — the stories are almost done, the photos have been taken, and then — oh, I guess we should talk