Syllabus

• Week 1

  Building blocks of good journalism

  • Welcome to the course

    Welcome to ‘A reporter’s toolkit for the digital and social age’ – a course designed to cement in your mind the building blocks of good, authoritative and engaging journalism – and get you creating some of your own.

  • Building blocks of good journalism

    What goes into making quality journalism? What are the key principles it is built on?

  • Developing 'news sense'

    How do editors decide which stories to feature on their pages or in their news programmes? The decisions will be based on news judgement or news sense. What is this and how can you develop it? Follow the next steps to find out.

  • Weekly wrap-up

    Lead Educator Angela Harrison looks back on what you’ve covered this week and highlights what’s coming up next week.

• Week 2

  Covering your community or area of special interest

  • Welcome to Week 2

    Let’s look ahead to what we will cover this week when we will be examining the important job many journalists do in covering and reflecting communities. How well do you think different areas or groups are covered in the media?

  • Exploring 'communities' in news

    Let’s look more closely at how different groups, areas and communities are covered by news outlets and find a story of your own related to this.

  • What is a 'patch' and how to cover one?

    Let’s take a closer look at how to cover a local area or ‘patch’ as a journalist. You will also hear some tips which will get reporters ahead of the opposition so that they are first with important local news.

  • Covering your own community - newsgathering

    Get some more tips on how to find stories in your local area or community - and then have a go at finding one of your own.

  • Weekly wrap-up

    Let’s wrap up our journalistic journey for this week with a quiz designed to get you thinking about what we have covered. Then we will look ahead to what’s coming next in this ExpertTrack.

• Week 3

  The power of social media in reporting and journalism

  • Introduction to Week 3

    We’re looking at the power and use of social media in news this week. Let’s find out more about how we are going to do that and what the week has in store.

  • The value of social media

    What’s the value of social media to journalism, reporting and news organisations? Let’s click through and find out.

  • What makes a good SM post for news?

    Let’s analyse some of the ways that social media posts for news can grab our attention and make us ‘click’.

  • The trouble with social media

    It’s not all puppies, smiles, chatting and contact-building on social media. Let’s look at some of the problems it brings for audiences, users and journalists.

  • Weekly wrap-up

    Let’s look back across the week and recap on what we’ve covered - and have a taste of what’s coming next.

• Week 4

  Personal stories in the news

  • Introduction to Week 4

    Let’s dive into Week 4 and see what is coming up.

  • Finding 'you' and 'I' in the news

    Let’s analyse some news stories and websites for examples of ‘personalisation’ of news stories and content.

  • Reporters becoming part of the story

    Trends for reporters putting themselves into stories come and go and digital technology has brought more informality to some story-telling in news. But does more of the reporter or presenter mean less objectivity?

  • End of the course

    Let’s recap what we’ve covered this week and in this course before we wrap it up.