This is a great resource for data journalism and comes highly recommended from your very own Amy O’Kruk. It’s an online book and completely free. You can find it here.
The Data Journalism Handbook
Writing effective headlines
Writing good headlines, for both print and online, can be tough. Sometimes they just come to you and other times you’re left thinking for a while. This list of tips is a good checklist for writing headlines and making sure they’re accurate and engaging.
You can find the Poynter article here.
NYT’s evolving model of journalism
The New York Times is planning a major overhaul of how it views and conducts journalism.
The new plans come two years after NYT’s innovation report came out, which was an extensive blueprint of how the paper views itself in the digital age moving forward. The current plan is more tangible — it talks about having ‘clusters’ instead of clumping major topics like climate change under certain desks like National, International or Metropolitan. There are also plans to move away print planning from all editors to dedicated teams of designers and editors for a more extensive focus on digital storytelling.
Here’s a Poynter article on NYT’s plans.
Course: 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.”
This paid Poynter course is available here. Editors and staff should contact the Gazette editor-in-chief for access to the course.
Basic Research – Skills and Tools
This booklet is a good resource for basic research tools for following paper trails and data mining. It also provides insight on identifying numerical information, statistics and carry out basic math functions.
The online version of the Basic Research – Skills and Tools can be found here.
The laws and ethics of investigation
This booklet and the accompanying exercises are a resource for understanding the rights of journalists under international human rights codes, precautions investigative journalists should took to protect themselves from civil suits and potential defences against such litigation. A number of other relevant investigative and legal elements are also discussed.
The online version of The Law and Ethics of Investigation can be found here.