Poynter

We're celebrating International Fact-Checking Day all week, but our dedication to facts is for life.

Weekly Training Digest - Advance Your Skills With Training And Resources

Team Poynter is in the middle of a weeklong celebration of facts, and you’re invited to join in on the fun.

Since the International Fact-Checking Day festivities kicked off on April 2, our nonprofit newsroom, teaching teams and fact-checking enterprises have unveiled a collection of our best resources to empower everyone — journalists, professional fact-checkers, educators and citizens alike — to do their part in slowing the spread of misinformation and elevating the truth.

Here are some of the ways you can get involved this week:

Connect with fact-checkers, download gamified lesson plans and take quizzes to test your skills on factcheckingday.com.
Share why #FactCheckingIsEssential to you on social media.
Check out videos, WhatsApp courses and activities from MediaWise and equip yourself with fact-checking skills to fight misinformation online.
Join our International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) on April 6 to congratulate the recipients of the IFCN’s most recent grant programs and learn how their work will improve the global exchange of information.
Give to Poynter and help advance and preserve press freedom in democracies worldwide.

Together, we can build a future based on facts. Keep scrolling for more opportunities.

— Andrew DeLong, director of teaching operations

P.S. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up for yourself here.

NEW AND UPCOMING

Immigration’s Impact on the U.S. Economic Recovery

Webinar, April 7 at 2 p.m. Eastern

Tune in to this free webinar from Poynter to explore the connection between the pandemic-era economy and the role of immigrant workers in your community. Along with our panel of experts, you'll debunk common myths about immigrant workers and their contributions to the economy, analyze how immigrant worker shortages, global lockdowns and increased border expulsions impact the economy, and discuss thoughtful approaches to journalism around these topics.

Cost: Free, thanks to support from the Catena Foundation.

ENROLL NOW

A Journalist’s Guide to Covering Jails – St. Petersburg

In-person workshop, St. Petersburg, Florida, June 2-3

This intensive two-day workshop will focus on understanding the causes and consequences of local jail incarceration and explore some ways that communities are addressing the issue. Poynter’s experts and experienced journalists will help reporters find engaging stories and reliable data so they can provide aggressive and thoughtful coverage of this vitally important topic. The sessions will be practical, inspiring and non-political. You can expect to return to your newsroom with a notebook full of specific, local story ideas and confidence in your ability to report them.

Cost: Free, thanks to the MacArthur Foundation.

APPLY BY APRIL 22

Will Work For Impact: Fundamentals of Investigative Journalism

Online group seminar, April 27-May 18

Investigative reporting can seem daunting. By definition, it involves uncovering a problem someone would prefer to keep secret. It requires critical thinking, persistence, courage and optimism. It can be lonely work. The good news is, there’s a roadmap you can follow.

Over the course of four weeks, award-winning investigative journalist Alexandra Zayas will break down the process to help you think about what kinds of stories to choose, how to build a bulletproof case and how to maximize the chance your work will create change.

Cost: $399.

ENROLL NOW

Becoming a More Effective Writer: Clarity and Organization

Online group seminar, May 3-27

This course is for anyone who wants to tell powerful, clearly organized stories — on deadline. Whether you write breaking news alerts, meeting summaries, scientific papers or business plans, you’ll come away from this four-week, intensive online course with the tools you need to deliver what your audience wants.

By analyzing your own writing, you will learn how to turn facts and data into compelling stories, write with clarity and power, zero in on potential problems that can lead to fuzzy writing and identify the pitfalls that keep you from writing concisely.

Cost: $429.

ENROLL NOW

ALUMNI NEWS AND MOVES

🙌 Congrats to the group of editors, educators and others who recently completed one of our newest trainings, Building an Ethical Newsroom, with Poynter senior vice president Kelly McBride.

Julia Rubin, editorial director for culture and features at Vox, wrote in a post-training survey, “This is a great opportunity to gain skills in ethical decision-making, and also illuminate where your newsroom can strengthen its policies and processes.”

Jill Taylor, assistant standards editor at The New York Times and alumna of our women's leadership academy, compared the final sessions to a master class for standards thinking. "I was very eager to learn about other newsrooms' challenges and approaches and different ways of thinking about the same fundamental journalism principles," she wrote. "The way we produce our journalism is constantly changing, and it seems important to make sure our systems for working ethically change along with it."

📣 Did you know Poynter offers customized ethics training and consultation? Learn more here.

Are you a Poynter grad with a story to tell? Email [email protected] to be featured in this spot.

REPORTING, WRITING & EDITING

How to Develop Stories from 2020 Census Data
Self-directed course, start anytime
Access and analyze data from the 2020 census. Cost: Free. Enroll now.

Summit for Reporters and Editors
Online group seminar, July 7-23
Learn practical strategies and tools to become a sharper reporter, writer and editor. Plus, receive one-on-one coaching and 20+ hours of live instruction. Cost: $700. Enroll now.

Understand U.S. Immigration From the Border to the Heartland
Self-directed course, start anytime
Understand how immigration actually works in the United States. Cost: Free. Enroll now.

ETHICS

Transforming Crime Reporting Into Public Safety Journalism
Online group seminar, May 10-Aug. 2
Transform the way your newsroom thinks about crime and community. Cost: $500. Apply by April 15.

COLLEGE RESOURCES

Teachapalooza: Front-Edge Teaching Tools for College Educators
Online or in-person program, St. Petersburg, Florida, June 10-12
Catch up, power up and reignite your passion for teaching with other journalism educators. Cost: $199. Register now.

MediaWise Campus Correspondents
One-hour online training
Bring front-edge fact-checking lessons into your classroom. Each training is led by college students and designed for college students. Cost: Free. Request training.

Open Records Success: Strategies for Writing Requests and Overcoming Denials
Self-directed course, start anytime
Learn successful strategies for requesting the records you want, as well as tips for overcoming an agency’s denials. Suggested donation: $20. Enroll now.