Stories and Streams by Paul Bradshaw [Leanpub PDF/iPad/Kindle]

About the Book

Collaborative methods are being increasingly used within the news industry, from Paul Lewis’s investigative work at The Guardian to Neal Mann’s field reporting for Sky, the Farmers’ Weekly team’s coverage of foot and mouth, and Andy Carvin’s coverage of the Arab Spring at NPR.

This ebook has been created to support journalism students and tutors in exploring collaborative journalism methods.

The book is based on a pilot project called ‘Stories & Streams’ which first ran at Birmingham City University in the 2011-12 academic year. This approach, then, builds on real teaching and learning experiences. The intention is to continue to update this book based on subsequent classes using the method and others' experience with the same methods.

For more background you can find a brief project report at the ADM-HEA Networks Magazine with a fuller report forthcoming in a HEA publication on collaborative learning. You can also find a post about the background on the Online Journalism Blog.

The three main findings were:

Students produce work that is more distinctive, succeeding in breaking away from the ‘churnalism’ that had characterised previous cohort’s efforts; work is now original, unique and in-depth.
The use of stream workshops, rather than whole class lectures, appeared to be successful in generating more activity in the students than we might normally expect.
The approach enabled students to develop transferrable and soft skills; research suggests that these skills, which are hard to teach.

About the Author

Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw

Paul Bradshaw runs the MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University, and is a Visiting Professor at City University’s School of Journalism in London. He publishes the Online Journalism Blog, and is the founder of investigative journalism website HelpMeInvestigate. He has written for journalism.co.uk, Press Gazette, the Guardian and Telegraph’s data blogs, InPublishing, Nieman Reports and the Poynter Institute in the US. He is the co-author of the Online Journalism Handbook with former Financial Times web editor Liisa Rohumaa, and of Magazine Editing (3rd Edition) with John Morrish. Other books which Bradshaw has contributed to include Investigative Journalism (second edition), Web Journalism: A New Form of Citizenship; and Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives.

His books on Leanpub include Scraping for Journalists and 8000 Holes: How the 2012 Olympic Torch Relay Lost its Way.

Bradshaw has been listed in Journalism.co.uk’s list of the leading innovators in journalism and media and Poynter’s most influential people in social media. In 2010, he was shortlisted for Multimedia Publisher of the Year.

In addition to teaching and writing, Paul acts as a consultant and trainer to a number of organisations on social media and data journalism. You can find him on Twitter @paulbradshaw

Other books by this author

Scraping for Journalists

How to grab information from hundreds of sources, put it in data you can interrogate - and still hit deadlines

byPaul Bradshaw
8000 Holes: How the 2012 Olympic Torch Relay Lost its Way

All proceeds go to the Brittle Bone Society

byPaul Bradshaw and Carol Miers
Model for the 21st Century Newsroom - Redux

How digitisation has changed news organisations in a multiplatform world

byPaul Bradshaw
Data Journalism Heist

How to get in, get the data, and get the story out - and make sure nobody gets hurt

byPaul Bradshaw

About this ebook
Research context
Using this book? Please share your experiences of teaching collaborative journalism
Stories and Streams - a brief explanation
Collaborative journalism - what and why?
Articles and video on collaborative journalists
Peer-to-peer learning: the student experience
1. Organising a collaborative journalism project: from issues to stories, and ingredients
Organising the class: facilitating peer-based learning
2. Roles in the team: moving from churnalism to depth
The Editor (E)
The Community Manager (CM)
The Data Journalist (DJ)
The Multimedia Journalist (MM)
The Network Aggregator (NA)
Resources on newsroom organisation
3. Using the Help Me Investigate network
4. Managing workflow
Publish regular pieces that come together in a larger single story
Set aside time to pull the parts together into a narrative
Create ‘sprints’ to maintain momentum
Prepare recipes for investigations
A sample recipe:
5. Teaching skills
Teaching community management
Teaching project management (the editor role)
Teaching network journalism
Teaching data journalism
Teaching multimedia journalism
Assessing collaborative journalism
Weighting
Appendix A: key resources in full
MOVING AWAY FROM ‘THE STORY’: 5 ROLES OF AN ONLINE INVESTIGATIONS TEAM
Roles in a team: moving from churnalism to depth
The Editor (ED)
The Community Manager (CM)
The Data Journalist (DJ)
The Multimedia Journalist (MMJ)
The Network Aggregator (NA)
Publish regular pieces that come together in a larger story
HOW TO BE A NETWORK JOURNALIST
7 ways to follow a field you want to investigate
1. Prepackaged news
2. Corridors of power
3. Events
4. Reluctant disclosures
5. Reports, research and consultations
6. Affected communities
7. Experts and observers
6 WAYS TO GET STARTED IN COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
1. Know where the communities are
2. Look for problems to solve
3. Be interested – listen and ask questions
4. Create content out of the process of discovery
5. Link, retweet, attribute and comment
6. Read about community management
STEP BY STEP: HOW TO START IN A DATA JOURNALIST ROLE
1: Brainstorm data that might be relevant to your investigation or field
2. Learn advanced techniques to obtain that data
3. Pull out the parts of data relevant to your field/investigation
4. Add value to the data
5. Communicate the story in the data
A STYLE GUIDE FOR COLLABORATIVE JOURNALISM: WHAT I’VE LEARNED FROM THE FIRST WEEKS OF HELP ME INVESTIGATE: NETWORKS
1. Write ‘news that I can use’
2. End your posts with a baton that others can pick up
3. Create momentum by posting small things, often, as you move towards your target
HOW TO GET STARTED AS A MULTIMEDIA JOURNALIST
Step 1: Look for multimedia opportunities in your journalism
Step 2: Plan and practise
Step 3: Improve the technical side with an understanding of principles
Step 4: Start simple, and go from there

Stories and Streams

Teaching collaborative journalism with peer to peer learning