Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Training

Cardiff students live-tweet PTC New Journalist of the Year Awards

Laura Oliver — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:44:38 +0000

Journalism.co.uk unfortunately couldn’t make today’s Periodical Training Council’s (PTC) New Journalist of the Year Awards – good luck to all the runners and riders.

Fortunately, a group of Cardiff University students are tweeting the results. Follow the hashtag #ptcnewjournalist2009 or the stream below:

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Adam Westbrook: Northwestern University’s journalism students and the ‘Innocence Project’

Laura Oliver — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:48:44 +0000

Adam Westbrook looks at an ongoing project at Northwestern University in the US, where students under the leadership of investigative journalist David Protess investigate, fact check and data mine criminal convictions in their region.

Focusing on murder cases where the defendants have been sentence to execution, the group has to date freed 11 men through their work.

“This isn’t so much an idea which has any business revenue potential obviously, although there’s a chance it could get a decent grant here and there. But what a way to get students engaged during their studies! And what a way to teach them the most difficult skill of all: investigation,” writes Westbrook.

Full post at this link…

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Story Curve: BBC College of Journalism site to launch on 14 December

Laura Oliver — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:05:39 +0000

Kevin Marsh from the BBC’s College of Journalism has more details on the forthcoming launch of the college’s public website on bbc.co.uk.

“It’s all arranged into four main categories: Ethics and Values, Law, Skills and Briefing. There’s also a cross-category bit of the site – the Glossaries.
We’ve tried to keep the structure as flat as possible – the idea is that you should be able to go exactly where you want with no more than a couple of clicks (…) something that’s helped by the site’s ‘intelligent learning environment’ – each page’s metadata should ensure that you’re offered on that page something else similar or related to the learning you’re reading or watching,” writes Marsh.

“We’ll be adding new content regularly – there’s already more stuff in the pipeline on court reporting, numbers, field production and political reporting – and building what we hope will be one of the most important networks around journalism and journalism education in the world.”

Full post at this link…

More details on plans for the College of Journalism website in this report from the DNA2009 conference.

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#soe09: Winners announced for NCTJ’s excellence awards

Laura Oliver — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:13:23 +0000

The winners of the National Council for the Training of Journalists’ (NCTJ) awards for excellence in journalism were announced today at the Society of Editors annual conference.

The prizes went to:

News Journalism
Student: Tim Fletcher, City of Wolverhampton College
Trainee: Arron Hendy, Dorset Echo

Sports Journalism
Student: George Scott, News Associates, London
Trainee: David Jordan, Grimsby Telegraph

Top Scoop
Student: Juliet Conway, Brighton Journalist Works (winner)
Student: Jessica Shankleman, Cardiff University (highly commended)

Features of the year
Student: Harriet Webster, NoSWeat Journalism Training
Trainee: Emily Koch, Bristol Evening Post

Images of the year
Student: Bethany Clarke, The Sheffield College, Norton
Trainee: Leah McLaren, Derby Telegraph

Awards for the best performance in examinations leading to the NCTJ Preliminary Certificate in Newspaper Journalism, NCE for Reporters and NCE for photographers were also presented:

NCTJ Student Journalist of the Year: Mary Hamilton, Press Association Training

NCTJ Photographer of the Year: Hannah Kinver, South Wales Evening Post

NCTJ Reporter of the Year: Victoria Carr, Wetherby News

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Shorthand week – a quick competition

Laura Oliver — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:14:26 +0000

The National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) has been promoting shorthand week this week – part of the organisation’s campaign emphasising the importance of shorthand in a journalist’s toolkit.

The campaign was featured on Radio 4 today, encouraging presenter John Humphrys to demonstrate his Pitman skills. The BBC website is asking if anyone can decipher his script.

Whether you agree with those or not (and feel free to tell us in the comments below), I thought I’d match Humphrys with a picture of my own Teeline scrawl – though apparently the Radio 4 man doesn’t think this counts in comparison to Pitman.

(No prizes for guessing which bit means iPhone)

When I learned shorthand, we had a few competitions as incentives to get us up to speed – in that vein, please send us images of your shorthand and I might even be able to rustle up a prize from my desktop for the neatest outlines.

Feel free to email images or send Twitpics to @journalismnews.

BBC – Today – A quick shorthand test.

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Half-price student tickets at ‘Will We Have News for You?’ event

Judith Townend — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:55:18 +0000

We’re informed a few tickets are still going for next Tuesday’s ‘Will We Have News for You?’ a Media Society night at the BBC; details below:

5:00pm, Tuesday 10 November 2009, BBC TV Centre Wood Lane, W12, Full price £10; students £5

Nick Pollard (former head of Sky News)

Mary Hockaday (head of multimedia newsroom, BBC)

Jonathan Munro (ITN)

Jonathan Levy (editor, General Election Sky News )

Stephen Cole (presenter, Al Jazeera English[tbc])

Contact: Mutesa Sithole – mutesasithole [at] googlemail.com

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Reuters runs safety training course for Gaza journalists

Laura Oliver — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:54:20 +0000

Reuters’ Gaza bureau ran a four-day training course this week in recognition of cameraman Fadel Shana, who was killed in the region on 16 April 2008.

Twenty Palestinian journalists received tuition in TV production, with extra training on aspects of safety and ethics in conflict zones, a release from Reuters said.

Sessions on filming and editing ran alongside first aid training, including the treatment of gunshot and blast wounds.

In April 2008, Shana was killed by a shell fired by Israeli soldiers. He was the first Reuters journalist to be killed in Gaza. The cameraman was on his way to cover an incident when his vehicle stopped. On getting out of the vehicle an explosion killed Shana and two bystanders.

A soundman travelling with Shana escaped serious injury.

In August last year the news agency said it was ‘disappointed and dissatisfied’ by an investigation by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) into Shana’s death, which said soldiers were justified in opening fire on Shana, as they believed his tripod-mounted camera might be a weapon.

Commenting on the training programme, Reuters bureau chief in Israel and Palestinian territories, Alastair Macdonald, said: “Fadel was killed doing a job to which he was dedicated and to which he brought immense talent and promise. To honour his memory and to improve opportunities for young Palestinian journalists who would wish to follow his example, we are delighted to be able to provide this training.”

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OJR: A checklist for starting your news website

Laura Oliver — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:03:22 +0000

Following on neatly from Hannah Waldram’s post on why UK journalism students need to be entrepreneurial too, the Online Journalism Review has created a checklist for setting up a news site if you’re a student or starting mid-career.

The detailed guide covers selecting a domain, advertising, blogging tools and using metrics.

Full list at this link…

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Hannah Waldram: ‘What journalism students need to know’

Laura Oliver — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:47:52 +0000

Journalism students need to be taught entrepreneurship skills, says Waldram – a trend that is emerging in the US and slowly starting in the UK.

“Part of the problem, I think, is not only that journalism courses are slow to amend their teaching syllabus in accordance with the changing times (probably because they have worked so well untouched for years), but also many local newspapers have failed to adapt to digital migration at the same pace as their readers. So even if trained journalists fresh out of j-school are given the right tool-set to aptly do online news, there are at the moment little places from them to shine while regional newspapers themselves adjust. In that gap, however, students could use what skills they do have to start up hyperlocal sites to continue practise their unique combination of traditional and new media skills. It’s this entrepreneurship which is being taught at CUNY, and our British counterparts should also be encouraged to do,” she writes.

Full post at this link…

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Camp VJ London – Day 2: Filming interviews

Laura Oliver — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:02:16 +0000

Yesterday I attended day two of the Visual Editors’ videojournalism training in London. The four-day course covers the fundamentals of videojournalism with proceeds going to not-for-profit news project Beamups.

You can read my report on day one of the course – an introduction to the basics of videojournalism in this post.

Below are some introductory tips to filming interviews learned from the course.

There are still places available on Thursday’s (October 29) programme, which will focus on selling your videos.

As day two was to focus on filming interviews, I spent most of it getting to grips with my tripod. I wanted to be confident with my kit so I could gain confidence of my interview subject; not look like a complete novice while struggling to get my camera to sit straight.

We learned about basic framing for a shot; where to stand to allow you to maintain eye contact and yet monitor your camera; and tips on getting your subject to relax and open up.

But my main lesson of the day went back to confidence: try to anticipate problems that might arise when you’re filming, before you’re doing it, advised our tutor Robb.

Good advice:

Prepare your tripod and camera as far as possible (e.g. check your battery’s charge).
Avoid one word or yes/no answers by giving your subject commands rather than asking questions e.g. “Tell me….”, “Describe to me….” – you need longer answers so you can get the worthwhile soundbites to edit.
Take headphones with you so (if your camera allows it) you can monitor how the footage sounds on location.
Take plenty of natural sound – you may need this if editing shots together.

Sent out on our lunch hour to find willing interview subjects, I convinced a local businessman to let me film in his shop. A hairdresser for 45 years, he was animated and engaging.

Some things I learned:

Don’t be afraid to move your camera if you want to change the framing during an interview. I needed to step a little closer to improve the frame and give louder audio. Just make sure you let your subject know what you are doing.
If your subject is sitting and you’re standing, this doesn’t matter, so long as the camera is at eye-level with the interviewee rather than the camera looking down on them.
Asking some initial throwaway questions helps your interviewee relax and gives you time to adjust your camera if needs be.

Editing my footage (around 10 minutes including cutaway shots) was much quicker today – less than an hour for three minutes, including work on audio and splicing together different answers with cutaways.

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