Track breaking news online - 1 day

Course tutor: Paul Bradshaw

Dates: Wednesday 20 August, 2008
Time: 10.00-17.00
Venue: Birmingham
Number of places: 10
Cost: £320 (+£56 VAT) including lunch

When news breaks it increasingly breaks online. And more often than not, it breaks in places where there are no journalists. People on the ground with mobile phones, cameras and access to the internet are the eyewitnesses and the primary sources. Many of them use the internet to publish initial reports direct from the scene. Journalists can't afford to ignore this resource - but tracking breaking news online requires a different skillset. This course provides:

• an introduction to popular social media tools and how to use them;
• a deep understanding of the practical use of these tools with solid examples;
• strategies for tracking news as it breaks on multiple social media sites simultaneously.

It will cover key techniques for:

• blogging, microblogging, uploading pictures and video;
• tracking 4,500+ news sources;
• using RSS feeds and a feedreader;
• best practice for contacting sources discovered on social media websites;
• blogging breaking news effectively;
• monitoring microblogs;
• tracking photographic and video output;
• performing background research more effectively;
• organising the online newsdesk.

About Paul Bradshaw

Paul Bradshaw is the publisher of the Online Journalism Blog and a Senior Lecturer in Online Journalism, Magazines and New Media at Birmingham City University.

Paul has managed editorial websites since 1998 and his blog has been running since 2004. He was the founding editor of Internet Monthly magazine and has 10 years' experience as a journalist, editor, designer and freelance writer, contributing to a number of books including the second edition of 'Investigative Journalism', 'How to Do Just About Anything on the Internet', and the forthcoming book 'Web Journalism'.

He has been teaching online journalism, magazine production and interactive promotion since 2002 and has been invited to speak to news organisations ranging from the BBC and Trinity Mirror in the UK to Norwegian broadcaster NRK and Brazilian TV network Globo. He has been described as a “journalism blogger extraordinaire” by The Guardian’s Head of Editorial Development Neil McIntosh; "Innovative and thought-provoking" by The Telegraph’s Digital Editor, Ed Roussel, and as one of the UK's most influential journalism bloggers by the Press Gazette.

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