Reporting is the heart and soul of what we do. Use these courses to firm up the skills that will help you to be successful on any beat. After you spend a little time with each segment here, use what you learned in discussions with colleagues and editors.
Writing concise, to the point stories isn’t about cutting until you’re under the limit. It’s about writing the story with the right words and nothing more. We’ll talk about finding the one thing that will drive your story, how a zero draft can start you in the right place, the magic of reading aloud and the secret sauce of short yet authoritative writing (that one, as they say, may shock you).
Google Basics: Advanced search, micro-search sites, Trends, MapChecking, fact-checking, etc.
Many newsrooms have historically focused on white, Christian, cisgender, heterosexual men when selecting story angles and choosing who to interview for stories on sports, politics, education, culture, courts and law enforcement and many other beats. But when reporters overlook women, LGBTQ people, Asian Americans, Black people, Latinos, disabled people, immigrants, Muslims, atheists and other often overlooked communities, they are missing the stories of this increasingly diverse nation and missing out on the chance to win over readers from those communities. At the same time, surface-level outreach to these communities is not appropriate. Reporters must build trust with sources in diverse communities, especially those outside their own, by staying educated on issues important to these communities and talking to well-known and everyday people in these communities. Every story must have diversity of sources. It is not acceptable to publish a story that does not include people from underserved communities. Writing a story about how billionaires are getting rich from the COVID pandemic? Talk to a Latino economist and/or a Black billionaire. Writing about how parents are tired of hanging out with their kids after quarantine? Talk to an Asian mom, a parent who is non-binary and a Jewish family therapist. Doing a story on the best TV shows to binge watch this August? If all the TV shows only feature white, cisgender people, then that story is not ready for publication.
During this session, enterprise reporters Romi Ruiz, Marc Ramirez and Jessica Guynn will talk about how they work to build trust with diverse audiences and find story ideas about communities that represent different experiences in the United States.
People unknown to you often tweet, email or text you videos from “news events.” But do you know if they are legit? Was the video from today or five years ago? Was the video doctored? How can we see when and where a video was first published? We’ll explore how with Watch Frame-by-Frame and Amnesty International’s YouTube Dataviewer.
WatchFramebyFrame.com
http://www.watchframebyframe.com/watch/yt/Xb0P5t5NQWM
Great for fact-checking videos. Paste URL into player and hit the arrow keys to look at each shot frame by frame. Watch for shadows out of place, etc. You also can watch frame by frame in YouTube by using the comma and period keys after pausing the video. Comma moves backward and period forward.
Exercise: Test both tools with this famous fake video of a bird trying to fly off with a kid. It was passed off as real and went viral. Watch the shadows of the bird and the kid for clues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE0Q904gtMI
ABC News story explaining how to tell it’s fake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr43I16B3Q
YouTube Dataviewer
https://citizenevidence.amnestyusa.org/
From Amnesty International, plug a YouTube video URL in and see where the video has been published through reverse lookup of video frames.
Case studies and examples of how to verify photos, video and other news.
More fact-checking tools on Journalist’s Toolbox: https://www.journaliststoolbox.org/category/trust-and-verification/
We’ll give you three photos to fact-check with context shared (for real) on social media about each photo. Your job is to reverse image search each photo to see if the context is accurate or if the photo has been misrepresented. Answers will be at the end of the video. No peeking!
Google Image Search: Check where and when an image was first posted to the web
–https://images.google.com
Tineye.com: Similar to Google Image Search but produces some different results
–https://tineye.com/
Link to the fact-checking exercise: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xWNFQ5SV4xYiBhtAQEr1GCdEk8vxyF5Z?usp=sharing
More fact-checking tools on Journalist’s Toolbox: https://www.journaliststoolbox.org/category/trust-and-verification/
People unknown to you often tweet, email or text you photos from “news events.” But do you know if they are legit? Was the photo from today or five years ago? Was the photo doctored? How can we see when and where a photo was first published? We’ll explore how with Google Image Search, TinEye and FotoForensics.
Google Image Search: Check where and when an image was first posted to the web
–https://images.google.com
Tineye.com: Similar to Google Image Search but produces some different results
–https://tineye.com/
FotoForensics: Breakdown meta-data and detect layering on news photos
–http://fotoforensics.com
More fact-checking tools on Journalist’s Toolbox: https://www.journaliststoolbox.org/category/trust-and-verification/
The first of a four-part series on fact-checking, we introduce you to some basic tools like Google Fact Check Explorer, Google Earth, the Verification Handbook and First Draft News resources. We’ll show you some practical ways these tools and resources can help you in your quest to verify the news.
Google Fact Check Explorer: https://toolbox.google.com/factcheck/explorer
Google Earth: https://www.google.com/earth/
First Draft News: https://firstdraftnews.org/
Verification Handbook: https://datajournalism.com/read/handbook/verification-1
More fact-checking tools on Journalist’s Toolbox: https://www.journaliststoolbox.org/category/trust-and-verification/
Bad information is dangerous, especially in uncertain times. Learn how to verify images and video, investigate social media posts, and identify misinformation with open-source intelligence tools.
Buzzfeed’s verification toolset
A discussion on developing a documents state of mind — the key to doing solid watchdog work on a beat. We’ll explore key records on a variety of beats and give practical tips on using open records laws. We’ll give you a checklist of what to know before you make a request and advice on wording your requests for documents and data.
In order to preserve our integrity, we must live up to the highest standards of objectivity, truthfulness, completeness, fairness, accuracy and impartiality. This can get tricky. Being proactive and communicating our standards clearly helps, but sometimes we slip up. Here’s a primer on what to watch out for, and how to steer clear of trouble.
Click here for Gannett’s social media policy
Social media guidance for newsrooms
Organized into four sections, “Nuts and Bolts,” “Special Effects,” “Blueprints for Stories,” and “Useful Habits,” this series is infused with more than 200 examples from journalism and literature.