Infuze: Training freelancers in cross-platform journalism
On Friday I was lucky enough to sneak inside the University of Central Lancashire’s (UCLAN) Sandbox – a space dedicated to ‘digital media R&D’.
I was there as part of the final day of Infuze – a joint training scheme from UCLAN and the BBC to retrain freelancers in multimedia journalism.
It was the first time the six-week course had been run (Journalism.co.uk reported on its launch back in January) and while course leader Paul Egglestone said there were some improvements to be made, he was pleased how far all participants had come in a short time.
Presentations from Ilicco Elia, head of mobile for Reuters, and videojournalist David Dunkley Gyimah gave all of us some food for thought, but mainly it was a great opportunity to chat with a group of freelancers facing the challenges of cross-platform journalism head on and hear about their experiences.
Only fair then to give them (and some of their newly founded websites ) a shout out (in no particular order):
Nazia Mogra – freelance broadcast journalist, now looking at the possibilities of newspaper video too.
Sean Smith – former print freelancer who turned his hand to broadcast journalism during the course. Smith said he’d learned that the ‘new skill is adopting a mindset of not being intimidated by tech that’s meant to be intuitive’.
Rumeana Jahangir – who is looking to develop a specialism on grassroots, community news and investigative work.
Emma Blackburn – freelancer broadcast journalist turned videojournalist during her course placement at Times Online.
Erisa Lluca – who having now set up her own website is determined to keep it going beyond Infuze.
Christina McDermott – or @misscay as shes known to her followers on Twitter, who discussed how she’s using social media as a freelancer (more from Christina on this later).
May 5th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Hello there! You got my name wrong. It’s actually Christina MCDERMOTT. Could you get it changed please? Thanks! x
May 6th, 2009 at 8:30 am
Corrected now, Christina. Thanks for pointing that out.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:20 am
[...] 8. Fund training programmes for current (recently redundant?) journalists in new technologies and entrepreneurship so the next generation of media organisations are prepared for the constant need to adapt to the rapid pace of media change – so, put more money into projects such as Infuze [...]
May 12th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Hi,
I’m afraid you got my name wrong as well. It’s Emma Blackburn not Emma Blackwell, would be grateful if you could change it.
Thanks!
May 12th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Duly amended, thanks!
May 12th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
I clearly had a complete mare when writing this post – apologies Emma – though now I have your blog address so can add in.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:15 am
[...] 8. Fund training programmes for current (recently redundant?) journalists in new technologies and entrepreneurship so the next generation of media organisations are prepared for the constant need to adapt to the rapid pace of media change – so, put more money into projects such as Infuze [...]