Questions? Contact Michael Roberts, NewsTrain project director, mroberts.newstrain@gmail.com
WORKSHOP SESSIONS
Planning & Coaching Content Across Platforms: How to frame clear standards and workflows for new digital media in a rapidly changing media environment. The focus is on building a strong set of online tools for covering your community and how to enable everyone on staff – reporters, editors, online producers, visual journalists -- to use the tools effectively.
Continuous
Coverage: Once your set of online tools is in place, how to plan and manage continuous news
coverage across digital and print platforms, and create content specifically
for the web and print. This program offers a model for developing a story
online and then using print to offer more.
Unleash
Your Watchdog – This is a program for reporters and editors on how to
identify and pursue powerful watchdog stories from everyday records. Includes
investigative techniques and strategies that lift high-impact enterprise from
daily beats, and enable reporters and editors to create authoritative work on
multiple platforms. The goal is not to wait for news, but to make it happen, whether
you’re a reporter in the trenches or editor at the helm.
Digging
for Data – Once a potential watchdog story is identified, how to use
timesaving techniques to drill through mountains of information – from paper
files to computer databases – and extract critical information that turns
routine stories into must-read enterprise. Includes simple methods and innovative
reporting tools to systematically mold raw data into hard-hitting leads and nut
graphs.
Data
Visualization: "Data visualization” is the popular term for
informational graphics on the web, where hyperlinks, animation, and interactive
features offer many new opportunities to present information in engaging ways.
This program offers of primer on techniques, tools, and approaches to data
visualization for editors, reporters, and online producers.
Smart Phones for Journalists: Hardware, apps, and techniques reporters and editors can use to capture, create, and transmit content from the field.
Social
Media: Creating Brands: How to use social media to engage readers, bring
them to your web site, and along the way create strong news-oriented brands for
individuals and your newsroom as a whole.
Beat
Mapping: How to use a technique called "beat mapping” to improve
coverage in daily and enterprise work. Beat mapping is used by reporters and
editors to outline new areas of coverage, to merge two or more old beats, and
to refocus existing beats on topics and issues that mean the most to readers.
The process also helps communicate clear expectations between reporters and
editors in managing work across print and digital platforms.
Managing &
Surviving Change: The news business and daily life in any newsroom is
engulfed in constant change. This program offers a simple eight-step approach
to managing change, for supervisors and staff, a model that can be used by
small groups or entire newsrooms to navigate change effectively and keep the
focus on strong results.
FACULTY
Michael J. Berens is a reporter on the investigative
team at The Seattle Times. He previously worked on the investigative team at the
Chicago Tribune and began his career at the Columbus Dispatch (Ohio). Previous
projects include the unchecked sexual misconduct among hundreds of health-care
practitioners; a comprehensive analysis of hospital infections and the MRSA
epidemic; FDA failures to thwart fraudulent medical devices; a military blunder
with a vaccine that led to unnecessary deaths; and the profiting of seniors and
how the state ignored deadly deficiencies. Berens’ work has been recognized through
many dozens of national and regional awards. He has twice been a finalist for
the Pulitzer Prize (beat and investigative reporting categories). First place honors
this year, for his "Seniors for Sale" project on abuses in adult family homes, include Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE); the White House
Correspondents Association; the National Press Club; Gerald Loeb Award;
Association of Health Care Journalists; Society of American Business Editors
and Writers; and Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting at Harvard
University.
Nicole Carroll is executive editor of The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, the number two position in the newsroom. She has been with Republic Media for the past 12 years, serving in roles ranging from breaking news editor to metro editor to features editor. She was part of the leadership team that transformed the Republic into a print-digital information center, and now is helping to lead the process of combining news operations with KPNX-12 News, Gannett's Phoenix TV station. Prior to joining the Republic, Nicole worked as a reporter and editor at papers including the El Paso Times, the East Valley Tribune and USA Today.
Josh Hatch is Online Content Manager for the Sunlight Foundation,
a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that uses the Internet to foster and promote greater government openness and transparency, and provides tools for media and citizens. He is also an adjunct instructor in graduate level multimedia journalism at American University and a board member for the Online News Association. Previously, Josh was Interactive Director at USA Today; a multimedia producer, USA Today; and a multimedia producer with Knight-Ridder.
Michael Roberts is a newsroom trainer and consultant and Project Director for NewsTrain. Previously, Michael was Deputy Managing Editor Staff Development at The Arizona Republic (2003-2010), responsible for all newsroom training, served as writing coach, and edited major projects. Outside his own newsrooms, Roberts helped create and launch NewsTrain, designed and taught the American Press Institute’s first online seminar for copy editors, and has presented programs for the Poynter Institute, American Press Institute, the Maynard Institute, Freedom Forum, and various National Writers Workshops. Before the Republic, Roberts was Features Editor, AME/Features-Business, and then for 10 years the Training Editor/Writing Coach at The Cincinnati Enquirer. He also worked as a writer and editor at the Midland (MI) Daily News, the Detroit Free Press, and as a senior editor at two magazines. He taught feature writing at the University of Cincinnati and regularly presented programs at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Arizona State University. Email: mroberts.newstrain@gmail.com.
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