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 DigitalEd courses, as well as those from Mediabistro, NewsU, and others. If we’re missing anything, or you’d like to pay to promote your training in the “featured training” spot of our weekly post, please contact Mark Glaser at mark [at] mediashift [dot] org. Any non-MediaShift courses in the “featured training” slot are paid placements. Note: Course and training descriptions are excerpts, edited for length and clarity.
DECEMBER 2016
Facebook Advertising: Advanced Strategy for Social Success in 2017
In this exclusive Ad Age custom webinar, Brand Networks takes you on a journey through Facebook’s intricate advertising ecosystem—from mobile to Instagram to Facebook’s Audience Network. You’ll learn which ad placements fit your business goals, which ad types will yield the best results, and how to reach the most engaged audiences possible.
Date and time: Dec. 15, 2016, 2 p.m. ET
Producer: Ad Age and Brand Networks
Place: Online Webinar
Price: Free
JANUARY 2016
Visual Storytelling
Visual storytelling is a critical component in a brand’s strategy. To maintain a strong digital presence content creators must have the skills to produce visual stories with video, images, data, and text. At this one-week intensive, you’ll learn best-in-class techniques for producing great visuals that tell stories on the web and on social media platforms.
Date and time: Jan. 9-13, 2017, 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. PST
Producer: UC Berkeley Advanced Media Institute
Place: UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism (North Gate Hall)
Price: $2,400
Virtual Reality: Immersive Video Storytelling
Interest in Virtual Reality (VR) is growing – don’t miss your chance to catch it ahead of the curve. With major brands like YouTube and Facebook developing platforms to support 360 video, VR is becoming more and more accessible to the general public. In this four-day workshop, you’ll record, stitch, and polish your own 360-video, as you learn which kinds of stories thrive in VR and explore the tools and software available to you.
Date and time: Jan. 10-13, 2017, 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. PST
Producer: UC Berkeley Advanced Media Institute
Place: UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism (North Gate Hall)
Price: $1,800
FEBRUARY 2016 & BEYOND
Mobile Media: Producing Visual Stories with your iPhone
Your smartphone is able to shoot amazing high definition video, act as a basic editing suite, apply professional-looking finishes and then instantly distribute the material around the globe. Empower your brand with versatile video skills at this 2-day Mobile Media workshop, where you’ll learn how to create high-quality video on the go, using just your iPhone. You’ll gain technical insights into video production and develop an understanding of what resonates with a mobile audience.
Date and time: Feb. 6-7, 2017, 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. PST
Producer: UC Berkeley Advanced Media Institute
Place: Berkeley Global Campus – Richmond, CA
Price: $865. 10% discount when you register by January 6th.
Podcasting: Telling Stories in Sound
We have a new infatuation with audio podcasts and rightly so. Streaming audio has become easier to access, is readily available on mobile devices, and is now more personalized than ever before. In this two-day certificate course, you’ll learn the art of creating and producing distinctive audio podcasts. You’ll practice hands-on recording and editing to develop your own podcast with direction from radio producer and podcaster Laura Klivans.
Date and time: Feb 8-9, 2017, 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. PST
Producer: UC Berkeley Advanced Media Institute
Place: Berkeley Global Campus – Richmond, CA
Price: $865. 10% discount when you register by January 8th.
COURSES ON DEMAND
How to Build and Teach an Online an Online Course
New technology and tools are transforming the learning experience and creating new opportunities — and challenges — for educators at high schools, community colleges, and four-year universities. In this online training, you’ll learn how to organize a course and plan modules in a learning management system — whether you’re transitioning an existing course or starting one from scratch. You’ll also get a chance to try out tech tools to enhance the online educational experience, understand how to develop relationships with students in an online environment and discover new techniques for creating robust discussion among students in the class.
Place: online
Producer: DigitalEd at MediaShift
Price: $19
Smarter Audience Analytics for Journalists
Do you get bored reading your own analytics report? Are you only reporting numbers. Analytics are a powerful tool, but only reporting pageviews and other statistics doesn’t change how a newsroom operates. In this training, we’ll look at how you can put analytics to work for you. What is your baseline? What measures do you use to determine a post’s success? What do analytics tell you about your audience? How can you turn that insight into actionable items by your staff? This session will help you utilize analytics to learn from your audience and find ways to build on successes.
Producer: DigitalEd at MediaShift
Place: Online
Price: $19
How to Make News Bots Work For You
Robot journalism is one of the year’s hot topics as more media brands are experimenting with the automated delivery of news on mobile. Some bots are completely automated services that mimic a normal text conversation, but most involve some human intervention. In this online training, John Keefe, Senior Editor for Data News & Journalism Technology at WNYC, will explain how bots work and how journalists can use them to enhance their reporting and improve efficiency.
Producer: DigitalEd at MediaShift and CUNYJ+
Place: Online
Price: $19
An Introduction to DocumentCloud
DocumentCloud is a catalog of primary source documents and a tool for annotating, organizing and publishing them on the web. Documents are contributed by journalists, researchers and archivists. We’re helping reporters get more out of documents and helping newsrooms make their online presence more engaging.
Place: online
Producer: Investigative Reporters & Editors
Price: free
Election Coverage: Follow the Money
There are several ways that political funds can play a role in key states, especially during an election year. You’ll see how to trace money that comes from outside sources to state-based political groups, and how to follow the path of expenditures from the ground game to the air wars.
Place: online
Producer: Investigative Reporters & Editors
Price: free
Marketing with Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr
Market your brand using Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr. This course will give you the knowledge of each of these platforms and enable you to identify the most appropriate ways to implement them to meet your business objectives.
Place: online
Producer: Mediabistro
Price: $149
Skills in 60: Build an Editorial Calendar for Social Media Channels
This in-depth short course will show you how to develop integrated editorial content calendars and establish a robust production and publishing strategy across all your social channels. The video lessons will guide you on how to plan, create, distribute and analyze your editorial calendar for long term success.
Place: online
Producer: Mediabistro
Price: $49
Twitter Marketing
Become a better, smarter marketer with Twitter to generate word-of-mouth, create leads, and grow your business. From hashtag strategy to deep data dives, influencer outreach to employing an effective posting schedule, you’ll master Twitter 140 characters at a time.
Place: online
Producer: Mediabistro
Price: $129
Whose Truth? Tools for Smart Science Journalism in the Digital Age
As journalists, we ignore science not only at our own peril, but at the peril of our readers, viewers and listeners. In this course, you’ll learn to how make sense of scientific data and tell stories in ways that connect with your audience. You’ll get techniques and tips to improve your interviewing and reporting skills. You’ll also learn how to lift the veil from front groups to launch investigations based on informed fact-gathering. When you’re done, you’ll have a toolkit of ways to identify and overcome the barriers journalists face when reporting on science-related topics.
Place: online
Producer: Poynter’s NewsU
Price: free
Social Media Master Class Part I
MediaShift’s Social Media Editor Julie Keck will lead you through using some of the most powerful publishing tools any media professional can use. You can learn how to optimize your feeds, post the right amount each day, and help promote your content or projects better. You can establish yourself as an authority using the right mix of social media platforms and skills. And most of all, it’s fun. Don’t be intimidated or overwhelmed by social media – you can do it!
Place: online
Producer: DigitalEd at MediaShift
Price: $19
Social Media Master Class Part II
You’ve established yourself on social media, but you want to grow your audience. How do you get people talking about your content without seeming too self-promoting? Learn to harness the power of #hashtags, run a popular live Twitter chat, find out what’s trending today and how to jump in at the right moment with the right content.
Place: online
Producer: DigitalEd at MediaShift
Price: $19
DigitalEd: 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, 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.
Place: online
Producer: DigitalEd at MediaShift
Price: $19
When a Staff Isn’t a Staff: Managing Freelancers
In today’s freelance economy, more and more workers are seeing the benefits of working as a freelancer or contractor. But what does that mean for the businesses that employ them? With a lean staff, many publications rely on freelance contributors, so it’s to everybody’s benefit to make that relationship a good one. Good freelancer relationships don’t just fall out of the sky. In this webinar, you’ll learn what makes freelancers happy (it’s more than just money!), how to cultivate good freelance relationships, and best practices for managing a sprawling, remote staff. With successful freelancer management, you’ll enjoy loyal, capable contributors and a robust publication.
Place: online
Producer: Poynter’s NewsU
Price: $29.95
How to Design a Brand
Learn how to design your brand by setting yourself apart from other businesses in your industry, build your own unique brand identity, conceptualize your logo design and creative direction, and apply your branding to establish credibility and increase exposure.
Place: online
Producer: CreatorUp
Price: $40
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
Producer: CreatorUp
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
Producer: CreatorUp
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
Producer: CreatorUp
Price: $40
Verification: The Basics
When a violent protest, mass-scale accident, or natural hazard unfolds, information tends to get jumbled, causing fear and confusion. With the growing use of technology, we have witnessed innumerable false and fake stories being shared on social networks, including photoshopped images, or reuploaded diced videos from unrelated events in the past. With increasing frequency, journalists are required to master the skills and expertise to handle the information that circulates on the Internet and elsewhere. Complementing our recently launched resource, the Verification Handbook, this course will provide the basic knowledge and techniques of verification in the digital age.
Place: online
Producer: Learno
Price: free
Your Photojournalism Survival Kit with Ron Haviv
Ron Haviv brings two decades of experience in building a photojournalism career on carefully laid groundwork. In this course, you’ll learn how to identify a captivating story and organize a plan for shooting it; how to create a budget and a pitch letter; and how to plan for any eventuality during the shoot, and cope with setbacks when they strike.
Place: online
Producer: Ron Haviv, Emmy-nominated photojournalist
Price: $79
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.
Bianca Fortis is the associate editor at MediaShift, a founding member of the Transborder Media storytelling collective and a social media consultant. Follow her on Twitter @biancafortis.