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To request further information on any of the training courses listed below, please click the individual course titles.
Our Journalism Skills courses are trained by working journalists who provide the practical feedback that delegates need to improve their reporting, writing, interviewing, subbing and editing skills.
As well as the courses listed below, other journalism skills topics include:
- Business News Reporting
- Finance and the City
- Introduction to Journalism
- Magazine Production
- News from Reports and Surveys
- Skill of the Rewrite Artist
- Specialist News
- Trade News
- News for Monthlies
The Good Interviewing course is ideal for junior writers and people new to interviewing.
Getting the information you want from an interviewee requires planning and technique. This training course gives journalists the opportunity to practise the preparation and execution of different interviewing styles in different situations.
Course content:
- Dealing with PRs: knowing who has promised what and to whom
- Spotting likely problems before the interview
- Coming up with a line of questioning
- Taking the interview where you want it to go
- Making the most of your questions
The Introduction to Writing for Magazines course is ideal for junior writers.
Different sections within magazines and websites require different styles of writing. This workshop gives new writers the opportunity to look at and practise techniques of writing in styles suited both to different sections within publications and to varying audiences.
Course content:
- Styles of writing - the possibilities
- Angling an article
- Making intros sing
- Different styles - different structures
- Adapting language for different readers
- How to end it
The News Writing course is ideal for journalists with up to one year's experience.
Understanding which information will interest readers is the foundation of good news writing. In this training session journalists learn to spot and build news stories for a range of styles and publications.
Course content:
- Understanding the role of news in newspapers, magazines and websites
- Identifying the best sources for news stories
- How to use the information gathered from sources
- How to structure a news story
- How to support a news story
The Real Life Features course is ideal for journalists with up to two years' writing experience who have to write or edit real life stories.
Course content:
- What makes a really good real life story?
- Where do you start?
- The angle
- The intro
- The ending
- Techniques of good real life writers - stolen from fiction!
- Interviewing
- Structure and style
- Other ways of pulling the reader in
- Making it work for you
The Feature Writing course is ideal for journalists with up to two years' experience.
Good features don't just happen. They are the result of careful planning and effective use of structure. In this course session delegates get the opportunity to break down the process of feature writing and try out different techniques to improve their writing.
Course content:
- Setting the style
- Planning for maximum effect
- Varying intros in your features
- Keeping the reader reading
- Quoting for impact
- Concluding with a flourish
The Relationship Features course is ideal for journalists who have to write or edit 'relationship' features.
Emotional features are a mainstay of many monthly - and weekly - women's and men's magazines. This course will reveal how to deliver them with originality and style.
Course content:
- Coming up with ideas: putting the spin on time-worn subjects
- The structure: how to keep the reader involved
- Writing a snappy and enticing intro
- Avoiding cliches
- Sourcing the right experts, and getting them to say what you want
- Wrapping it up
The News Reports for Women's Magazines course is ideal for journalists who have to write or edit 'news' features for women's magazines.
Showing journalists the benefits of topical news features, and how to deliver them with originality and style.
Course content:
- Where do ideas come from? How to milk the papers for news stories
- Angling the story for your publication
- The structure: how to keep the reader involved
- Writing a snappy and enticing intro
- Statistics and experts: how to source them, getting the latter to say what you want
- Wrapping it up
The Subbing course is ideal for subs with up to one year's experience.
Good subs are the lynchpin of many publications. In this session delegates get the chance to think about the roles, responsibilities and aims of the sub, as well as gaining practical experience of cutting, rewriting and fine-tuning copy.
Course content:
- Making sure text conforms to style and keeping it accurate and readable
- Copy editing
- Cutting, writing off
- Style sheets
- Headlines
- Eyecatchers
The Researching course is ideal for journalists with a basic experience of interviewing and writing who need to develop the skills and knowledge to build deeper, more exclusive articles based on investigative journalism techniques.
Delegates will improve their ability to attract readers with well researched, exclusive investigative articles and series of articles for their publications. This course will evaluate the best sources of information, see how they can be approached and develop the techniques to gather and exploit contacts.
Course content:
- The different types of investigative stories and what they bring to a publication: new material, analysis, exposé and overview
- Persuading contacts to release information
- Developing and managing contact lists
- Handling the different levels of attribution
- Running an investigation
The Researching Online course is ideal for anyone who wants to make better use of the internet and other research tools in order to come up with better copy.
Understanding where information comes from helps contextualise what it is delivering. This course looks at some key sources of information on the web.
Course content:
- Getting the most out of search engines: what are they, which are best, how do they work?
- Other web sites and sources: government, commercial, user written web sites, WebBlogs, portals, news and other editorial sites
- Organising your computer to get the most out of the Internet
- More tools
- Putting your knowledge to work
The Review and Test Writing course is ideal for beginners, up to those with two years' experience.
The best reviews and tests make an interesting read whether the reader has any intention of buying/using the product or not. In this training session delegates consider the options for structure and style.
Course content:
- Applying standards to preparation and planning
- The importance of structure
- Managing your time effectively
- The pros and cons of negative reviews
- The conflict between providing information and entertainment
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How far to personalise a review
The Proof Reading course is ideal for subs of all levels and any other editorial staff who need to proof effectively.
Through a series of exercises delegates learn how to spot mistakes and improve pages.
Course content:
- Proofing - the basics
- Understanding the production process
- Where proof reading comes in
- How to use proof correction marks
- Establishing an effective proofing process
- Checking and accuracy
- The importance of grammar and punctuation
- Tips on spotting mistakes
- Developing and implementing a house style
- Ways to improve the effectiveness of proof reading
The Financial Reporting course is ideal for any journalist who wants to understand the fundamentals of business finances in order to extend their coverage.
Good stories can hide in numbers. This session gives delegates a deeper understanding of financial reports and sources. Delegates will be able to recognise, use and analyse the key financial terms. They will be shown how to interpret the main financial reports.
Course content:
- The main accounts of a company: Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow
- What to look for in the accounts
- The key ratios and how to use them
- Building league tables and financial comparisons
- Sources of finance and what they are looking for
- The role of investors, auditors, markets and regulators
The Comic Writing course is ideal for any journalist who wants to add humour to their writing repertoire.
During this course delegates will learn to adapt some of the techniques and rules used in TV and cinematic comedy dialogue to help deliver funnier, fresher magazine writing without the pain.
Course content:
- How comedy works
- From character to caricature
- The basic building blocks
- Adding comic touches to an interview
- Putting humour in a review
- Writing funnier photo captions
The Spinning Stories course is ideal for news/feature writers, section editors and sub editors who want to sharpen the edge of their writing to more closely address their readers.
Readers pay more attention to articles which are closely focused on their needs. This workshop will help writers, section editors and sub editors find the hooks which make articles directly relevant to readers.
Course content:
- Making it work for your reader
- Spotting and creating trends
- Getting the tone right
- Including the key terms that will hook your readers
- Keeping the angle going through the story
- Spinning 'old' news
The Short Interviews course is ideal for journalists with up to two years' experience who do most of their interviewing on the hoof, on the phone or by e-mail.
Lack of time is the biggest challenge for most interviewers, particularly when celebrities are involved. Preparation is everything if you are going to make the most of your ten minutes, particularly when they shrink to five! Developing timing for the unexpected or 'different' questions is key. Keeping the subject talking to the last second is vital. And as e-mail interviewing becomes pervasive, asking questions in a way that will help your readers 'get' the essence of the subject is the only way to differentiate your copy.
Course content:
- Preparation essentials
- What the reader wants to know
- Managing time
- Establishing instant confidence
- Developing an ear for vital triggers
- Notes and checklists: multi-tasking
- 10 tips for the successful short interview
The How to Interview an Expert course is ideal for staff writers who have to interview experts or industry figures for news pieces or features.
We all want to be an authority on our subject, right? And what better way to do this than interview an 'expert' to give gravitas to our piece, or to tell the readers something they didn't already know.
Course content:
- How to decide on the expert you need, and discovering where to find them
- Taking a five minute crash course in their subject, so the expert will take you seriously
- Being prepared in advance, so the expert will say what you want them to
- Turning impenetrable expert language into something your readers will understand
The Introduction to Reporting Skills course is an introduction to the principles of reporting and news gathering and is ideal for delegates with little background or training in basic journalism.
An instant guide to the skills which reporters may otherwise spend several years acquiring in the early stages of their career. It also bridges into the first principles of writing news, without duplicating the tasks set in the news writing courses themselves.
Course content:
- How to collect and assimilate information
- How to approach potential sources
- How to deal with problems of access and obstruction
This course is particularly useful when a publication hires a writer who comes from a specialist background in research or industry and has little direct experience of journalism itself. It can also be adapted to include non-journalist staff within a publishing company who want to learn more about the techniques and objectives of journalism, perhaps as preparation to move into that area themselves.
The Rewriting course is ideal for anyone who is frequently called upon to rewrite copy.
This workshop will allow you to quickly identify what is wrong so that you can more speedily put it right.
Course content
- Creating a checklist for copy
- Identifying bad writing
- Structure
- Working through basics - intros; links; pace
- Putting it all together
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