Each week, MediaShift will list upcoming online trainings and courses for journalists and media people — with a focus on digital training. We’ll include our new DigitalEd courses, as well as those from Mediabistro, NewsU, KDMC, and others. If we’re missing anything, please let us know at mark [at] mediashift [dot] org.
Podcasting: Create your own five-star podcast
According to reports from Edison Research, the number of consumers who listen to podcasts has jumped 163% from 2006 to 2012. And with shows like Serial, This American Life, 99% Invisible, and Radiolab, millions of listeners are informed and educated every week. If you are looking to connect with influencers, customers, and the world, podcasts are the way to go. In this course, you will create your own podcast. You’ll define and refine your show’s concept and audience, record the first episode of your podcast, and publish it to the world.
Date and time: August 17 – September 21, 2015
Place: online
Price: $470.
AUGUST 2015
Creative Writing Foundations: Magazine
Every established magazine writer once had to learn the basics. This course will teach you the foundations of what makes great magazine writing, and will also cover how to write a great pitch, how to research your article and interview your subjects, a grammar review, and matching the tone of different publications.
Date and time: August 17 – September 21, 2015
Place: online
Price: $470
TV Power Reporting Academy
For 17 years, The Poynter Institute’s Al Tompkins has led this seminar that is a bedrock for Poynter teaching. You will get feedback on your work, will sharpen your writing and storytelling skills, learn how to enterprise stories and look beyond the obvious, tired ways of covering daily news. Of course, Poynter focuses on ethical decision-making skills and adding diverse voices to stories. We keep things practical, usable and affordable. We’re combining the best of online learning with in-person coaching and mentoring to help you tell stronger stories and make those tough calls on deadline.
Date and time: August 17 – September 25, 2015
Place: online
Price: $500. Applications are due July 31, 2015
The Fundamentals of Digital Advertising Sales
In today’s newsroom, a strong digital advertising strategy is necessary to support quality journalism. Digital advertising is also an important part of the ecosystem that allows communities and businesses to grow together. Businesses provide income for news organizations, who provide not only news but also connections to businesses that serve the community. This webinar offers a deeper understanding of the value of digital advertising to the reader, advertiser, newsroom and communities you serve. You will also walk away with a formatted worksheet to connect the dots between audience growth and revenue.
Date and time: August 27, 2015, 2pm ET
Place: online
Price: $29.95
SEPTEMBER 2015
Web Headlines & SEO Essentials (September 2015)
Headlines appear on the Web with photos, graphics or other type, but usually they stand alone. That means you’ve only got a few words—and a few seconds—to tell readers what the story (or blog posting, video or photo gallery) is about. In this course, we’ll focus on considerations unique to the Web. Chief among these, of course, is SEO – a set of technologies and techniques that can bring more eyes to your content and more visitors to your site.
Date and time: September 7-22, 2015
Place: online
Price: $299
Emerging Social Platforms for News: Introduction and Best Practices
You see these video streams popping up in your Twitter feed, you watch Snapchat stories from big news organizations. You know you need to be sharing your own news on these emerging platforms, but maybe you don’t know where to start. New visual platforms are popping up all the time. How do you experiment and build a following? In this Webinar, you’ll get background on the most popular social media platforms, and you’ll explore best practices for using social media to share your reporting, develop a following and engage with your community.
Date and time: September 10, 2015, 2 pm ET
Place: online
Price: $29.95
Headlines, Not Cheaplines or Borelines
It’s time to stop boring your readers or serving them sophomoric puns in headlines. Your stories and readers deserve better. You need to slather on the SEO (for humans, not robots) and swirl in a sliver of sophisticated creativity — all while being a headline factory. How can you do it all? This session will cover research on successful headlines from the reader’s perspective and how to figure out what stories to invest time in.
Date and time: September 22, 2015, 2 pm ET
Place: online
Price: $29.95
Investigative Storytelling, Lessons from a Career in Radio: Master Class with Howard Berkes
In this Poynter NewsU event, NPR investigations correspondent Howard Berkes will discuss his approach to audio storytelling, including why and how to gather compelling audio, how audio often needs a reporter’s finely-tuned writing to make it work best and how to tell complex stories solely with sound and spoken words. Participants will also hear about Berkes’ approach to investigative stories, including the challenge of rendering reams of data, documents, perspectives and facts into a compelling audio narrative. He’ll talk about how he humanizes data and documents, and how he decides what fits into a story or series after days, weeks and even months of work.
Date and time: September 25, 2015, 10:30 am ET
Place: online
Price: $99
OCTOBER 2015
Mobile Media: Producing Visual Stories With the iPhone
This two-day certificate workshop provides all skills necessary for shooting quality video on your iPhone. We’ll take you through how to capture key moments from events, product launches, conferences and interviews to publishing on social networks or your website. You’ll work hands-on with experienced TV and online content producers to learn foolproof techniques for capturing professional looking videos on your iPhone. Plus, we’ve added an optional one-day lab: Advanced Video Editing for the iPhone.
Date and time: October 1-2, 2015, from 8:30 – 4:30 daily; additional one-day advanced editing lab October 3, 2015, from 8:30-4:30.
Place: 160 Spear Street in San Francisco, CA; additional one-day advanced editing lab at 141 North Gate Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley CA
Price: $825 USD for two-day workshop on October 1-2, 2015. Register before September 10, 2015 for a 10% discount. Discount automatically applied during registration. $350 USD for one-day advanced video editing lab for the iPhone on October 3, 2015. Register Here – Advance Registration Required.
App Development Strategy and Marketing
As the app ecosystem continues to explode, many magazine publishers and content creators are still wrestling with app development and overall audience marketing and engagement strategies to ensure their app performs in an ever increasing competitive marketplace. This two-day certificate workshop will help you determine what app development strategy is the right fit for your organization with best practices for building and engaging your digital app audience.
Date and time: October 7-8, 2015, from 8:30 – 4:30 daily
Place: Graduate School of Journalism, University of California Berkeley, near San Francisco.
Price: $865. Register before September 4, 2015 for a 10% discount.
NewsTrain: Digital Skills for Journalists, Monroe Edition
Sessions include maximizing your use of social media for branding and reporting; improving your mobile newsgathering; generating better data-driven enterprise stories; mastering the mobile-first, multi-platform news cycle; and navigating the new ethical challenges of digital journalism.
Date and time: October 15-16, 2015
Place: University of Louisiana at Monroe Student Union Building, Mitchell St., Monroe, Louisiana.
Price: $75. It includes dinner on Oct. 15 and Continental breakfast, lunch and snacks.
NewsTrain: Digital Skills for Journalists, DeKalb Edition
You will learn how to: produce enterprise stories efficiently; get started with data journalism; maximize your use of social media for reporting, as well as for personal branding and community engagement; shoot engaging smartphone video; use audience analytics to get your stories read; take create approaches to local features coverage; and unleash your watchdog with beat mapping.
Date and time: October 29-30, 2015
Place: Northern Illinois University, where visitor parking is at 200 Carroll Ave., DeKalb, Illinois 60115. The workshop sessions will be in the university’s Holmes Student Center, 340 Carroll Ave., in the Heritage and Lincoln rooms.
Price: $75. It includes Continental breakfast, lunch and snacks each day.
Digital Media Skills Certificate
You’ll experience best practices for telling stories to an online audience—through social media, on the web and to a mobile audience. You’ll learn to engage with video, digital photography, audio recordings, and data visualizations. You’ll have the tools and storytelling skills to produce, edit and post content 24/7. This includes having the skills to code or use tools for quick production. We’ll also teach you what metrics are important in determining engagement and how to market your product or personal brand. Upon completion of this program, participants will have the knowledge and tools necessary to apply their new skill set immediately to their profession.
Date and time: October – December 2015
Place: Graduate School of Journalism, University of California Berkeley, near San Francisco.
Price: TBA
NOVEMBER 2015
NewsTrain: Digital Skills for Journalists, Philadelphia Edition
This will be a digital-storytelling boot camp: two full days of training that will help you make smart decisions about the best way to tell a story. This workshop will introduce you to: producing video, recording sound and shooting photos with your smartphone; writing news for mobile; using data to drive enterprise reporting; and maximizing your use of social media for both reporting and branding.
Date and time: Nov. 13-14, 2015
Place: Temple University in Philadelphia. The Nov. 13 classes will be in Mitten Hall, 1913 N. Broad St. The Nov. 14 classes will be in Annenberg Hall, 2020 N.13th St. The Friday evening reception will be in the Atrium of Annenberg Hall.
Price: $75. It includes two days of training, Continental breakfasts and lunches, plus a reception on Friday evening.
JANUARY 2016
Visual Storytelling
A one-week workshop with seminar style and hands-on training in essential skills for producing visual content to a digital-first media environment.
Date and time: January 11-16, 2016, Monday through Friday, 9:00 am- 5:00 pm daily. Morning coffee and networking lunch is included.
Place: Graduate School of Journalism, University of California Berkeley, near San Francisco.
Price: $2,400 USD, Register Early for 10% discount. Discount immediately applied at registration.
NewsTrain: Digital Skills for Journalists, Lexington Edition
In this daylong NewsTrain, you will learn how to maximize your use of social media for reporting, as well as for personal branding and community engagement; tell video stories more efficiently in ways other than the traditional TV-news segment; shoot video effectively on your smartphone; spot enterprise stories in data, whether your beat is government, sports, the arts, business or education.
Date and time: Jan. 21, 2016
Place: Hyatt Regency Lexington, 401 W. High St., Lexington, Kentucky 40507. The workshop precedes the Kentucky Press Association Winter Convention at the hotel.
Price: $75. It includes a full day of training, breakfast, lunch and snacks.
More course listings are available at MediaShift’s DigitalEd, Poynter’s NewsU, Berkeley Advanced Media Institute, Columbia Journalism School’s Continuing Education listings and Mediabistro.
Sonia Paul is a freelance journalist based in India, and is the editorial assistant at PBS MediaShift. She is on Twitter @sonipaul.