Stories and Streams
Stories and Streams
Teaching collaborative journalism with peer to peer learning
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
Table of Contents
- 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
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