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.
FEATURED TRAINING
Smartphone Filmmaking 101
Whether you’re shooting coverage for your high-concept documentary, making a low-budget music video for your band, or shooting pick-ups for your corporate online PSA, there are a multitude ways to use your phone as a legitimate route for production. This training will illustrate the use of the iPhone as a low-budget professional production camera. We’ll include short practical tips on shooting techniques. We’ll review and demonstrate some of the emerging technology, apps and software alongside of traditional tips and tricks that can be added to a smartphone in order to make it a more robust production camera. While this class will concentrate on an iPhone, most concepts are applicable to all smartphones.
Date and time: Oct. 7, 2015, 1 pm ET
Place: online
Price: $39
OCTOBER 2015
How to Start a Podcast
Podcasts are having more than a moment — they’re in the middle of a revolution. According to recent research, consumption of podcasts grew 25% from 2013 to 2014, and that number continues to grow. But there’s still plenty of opportunity to jump on board this emerging medium to increase your authority, develop new skills, reach your audience in a new way…and even develop a brand-new audience that might otherwise never have found you. In this session we’ll cover the basics of getting your podcast off the ground. Don’t let this exciting moment pass you by! The technology is manageable even for relative luddites, and if you start your podcast now, you’ll be part of an exciting movement and meet an audience that’s hungry for content.
Date and time: Oct. 14, 2015, 1 pm ET
Place: online
Price: $39
Facebook Marketing
Apply Facebook tactics proven to build a fan base and grow your business. This course covers best practices to successfully navigate the multitude of marketing capabilities Facebook offers and will enable you to identify and leverage those that are most important for your brand to succeed.
Date and time: Oct. 5-26, 2015
Place: online
Price: $385
Develop a Freelance Writing Career
Want to write for magazines and other publications full-time, but don’t know how to get started? This class will teach you the skills you need to be a freelance writer, from coming up with ideas on your own to effectively pitching them. In addition, you’ll learn to manage your finances, how to market yourself, and the best ways to ensure that you never run out of assignments.
Date and time: Oct. 6-27, 2015
Place: online
Price: $385
Social Media Analytics
This class, designed for marketers, bloggers, community managers, and anyone wanting to learn the ins and outs of social media measurement, will show you how to set up tools to measure your social media activity and make sense of the data you collect. You’ll learn how to sift through web analytics, Facebook Insights, and Twitter mentions in order to develop a comprehensive reporting and tracking system. We’ll look at free and paid tools so no matter what your budget, you will have a strategy to measure results.
Date and time: Oct. 7-28, 2015
Place: online
Price: $385
Livestreaming the News: Replacing the Satellite Truck with a Cellphone
Livestreaming, once restricted to TV stations with expensive satellite trucks, is now affordable, accessible and relatively easy to produce. In a pinch, all you need is a reporter with a smartphone to go live on most any website. Whether you’re covering breaking news in the field or planned live events like press conferences or town hall meetings, livestreaming is a great way to add video and boost user engagement on your site and social channels. Both on the technology side and the reporting side, there are best practices for everyone who will wield a cell phone and broadcast directly to a site. This Webinar will show you how to go from no livestream to an easy livestream on your site, or help you strengthen your site’s livestreaming capabilities if you have started to experiment.
Date and time: Oct. 7, 2015, 2 pm ET
Place: online
Price: $29.95
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: Oct. 7-8, 2015, from 8:30 – 4:30 daily
Place: Graduate School of Journalism, University of California Berkeley, near San Francisco.
Price: $865.
Managing the Big Project
From vetting the idea to finding collaborators to coaching the story: How to produce “big” stories worthy of your time and your audience’s. How are cross-platform, multimedia and in-depth stories developed? How do you know if a story is worth the investment? How do you organize the reporting and writing/producing?
Date and time: Oct. 13, 2015, 2 pm ET
Place: online
Price: $34.95
The Nuts and Bolts of Setting a Digital Strategy
Drafting your short-term and long-term digital strategies can seem so daunting that you don’t know where to begin. Where does the editorial strategy fit in? What about technology? Revenue? What are the appropriate goals and KPIs? What are the resources — personnel and budget — that are needed? What new whizbang should you invest in? In this Webinar, you will learn how to make the most of the resources you are given. For organizations with limited resources, how-to create a champagne product on a beer budget.
Date and time: Oct. 14, 2015, 2 pm ET
Place: online
Price: $29.95
How to Plan for a Great Digital News Product
You want to launch a new channel, a new section, a new app, or a special storytelling project. These big launches can mean big boosts in traffic and engagement (not to mention morale!) But before you dive in, it’s important to make sure you have the answers to a few key questions. What are the key measures of success? What are common pitfalls and how to avoid them?
Date and time: Oct. 15, 2015, 2 pm ET
Place: online
Price: $29.95
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: Oct. 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.
Proposal Writing, In-Person
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: Oct. 17, 2015
Place: Google NY, One Worldwide Plaza 825 8th Avenue, 29th Floor, New York, NY
Price: $275.
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: Oct. 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: Oct. 6 – Dec. 10, 2015
Place: Graduate School of Journalism, University of California Berkeley, near San Francisco.
Price: $3,875
NOVEMBER 2015
Infographics and Visual Data
It’s no secret that infographics have become one of the most important tools for sharing information on the web. In this course, you will learn how to create effective and beautiful infographics that you can share with your followers to help tell a compelling story and grow your business or brand.
Date and time: Nov. 9-Dec. 7 2015
Place: online
Price: $385
Using Data for Better Sports Journalism
Money and power combine to make investigative journalism about sports incredibly challenging. Owners and leagues keep a very tight hold on information about their teams’ finances, performance, and controversies. But there are ways around the secrecy that lead to accountability. In this Webinar, you’ll learn what data is available and where to find it. You’ll get tips on how to use data, see some great examples from other reporters, and get empowered to find the documents and data you need to investigate your story.
Date and time: Nov. 12, 2015, 2 pm ET
Place: online
Price: $29.95
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.
COURSES ON DEMAND
Use Social Media to Grow Customers & Build Audience
Do you have a Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram and want to effectively use them to help your business? Learn how to work with different social media platforms to promote your business.
Place: online
Price: $30
How to Crowdfund 10K
Learn how to raise $10,000 by designing a one-of-a-kind crowdfunding campaign. Learn how to set goals and better prepare yourself for a campaign launch. Once your campaign launches, you’ll be an expert on methods of raising the most money, and how to design a professional page.
Place: online
Price: $30
How to Livestream on YouTube
Have you ever wanted to broadcast — live — but weren’t exactly sure how to do it, or what tools to use? Learn the technical nuts and bolds of how to livestream anything on YouTube, and how to market your show so people will see it.
Place: online
Price: $25
How to Tell a Story to Build a Community
Do you need to build a following, but are not sure how to tell your story to grow your community? Learn how to tell a story that will help others relate to you and your mission to take action.
Place: online
Price: $40
Using Facebook as a Reporting Tool
We get it. You use Facebook for posting photos and keeping in touch with family. You’re pretty happy with your trusty Rolodex of sources. And the most “journalism” you do online might be to verify the age of your teenager’s latest crush. But with the right skills, you can turn Facebook into a massively helpful engine to find story ideas, sources, information and quotes. You’ll also learn best practices for engaging with your audience not only to promote your content, but also as a community you care about and are a part of.
Place: online
Price: $29.95
More course listings are available at MediaShift’s DigitalEd, Poynter’s NewsU, Berkeley Advanced Media Institute, Columbia Journalism School’s Continuing Education listings, Mediabistro and CreatorUp.
Sonia Paul is a freelance journalist based in India, and is the editorial assistant at MediaShift. Her work has appeared in a broad range of media, including the Al Jazeera Media Network, Caravan, Foreign Policy, Guardian, Mashable, New York Times, PRI’s The World, Roads & Kingdoms and VICE News. She previously produced the grant-funded podcast series Shizuoka Speaks, based in Japan. She is on Twitter and Instagram @sonipaul.