Steve Buttry’s website is great for anyone looking for resources and advice on student journalism. He recently wrote an article titled, “Questions to help student media (and pros) brainstorm transformation.” It is basically a summary of a speech he gave with a list of questions student journalists should be asking themselves as they seek to be innovative in campus journalism. Definitely worth a read.
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.
This piece published in the Toronto Star is a well written feature on anorexia that uses a personal story as a focal point but also explores myths of the disease, history, and symptoms. Partway down the page is a good example of interactive graphics – a simplistic timeline with multiple tabs that may be good for giving context in longer stories in small chunks.
The story can be found here.
This is a free, video-based course on data journalism available online. It has lectures, tutorials, assignments, readings and discussion forums.
The course has modules which teach journalism students how to find ideas with data analysis, managing messy data and telling stories with visualizations. It is taught by five journalism experts, including university professors and professionals specializing in data.
The course can be found here.
This multimedia collection on President Obama’s presidency in the Washington Post is very well done. The entire front end of the feature is presented in full-page graphics. It provides a great template idea for presenting long-form stories and features with timelines.
The story can be found here.
“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.
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.
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.
This volume of the Investigative Reporters and Editors Journal focuses on hidden stories on university campuses and how to go about looking for them. It’s an excellent starting point for new story ideas and a must-read for campus journalists.
The IREJ is available with subscription only. Editors and staff should request the editor-in-chief for access to the Gazette’s copy.
“Creating a successful journalist is not like passing a recipe down through generations. There is no single fixed formula of core skills that journalists need to be successful. It is a list that is forever changing and evolving, just like journalism itself.”
Core Skills for the Future of Journalism is a Poynter Institute publication by Howard I. Finberg and Lauren Klinger. The online version can be found here.
