7 sites to train freelance bloggers about journalism

October 13, 2009 by Kurt
Filed under: social media 
religionbooks

Courtesy kogakure, via Flickr under CC 2.0 license. http://bit.ly/tzAfY

One of my small pleasures at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is a blog our religion writer Tim Townsend and I created. It’s called “Civil Religion.” For a year and a half, it’s been The Little Blog That Could. Nearly every post attracts comments. It gets respectable traffic numbers (more when it’s featured on the home page of STLtoday.com, of course). And its following is a loyal one.

The blog started with a dozen writers from the St. Louis community, representing a variety of faith traditions from Judaism to Islam to Christianity in many stripes — Catholicism, Mormon, evangelical and Episcopalian.

About a week ago, we debuted an expanded stable of bloggers. Some had dropped out of the earlier group. Now we’re up to about 30 who contribute and, already, we’ve seen traffic increase from the more-frequent contributions to the blog. I’m grateful for their contributions and their passion for the subject. They engage readers, they are often insightful and frequently controversial.

Now, a new development: Public relations people have begun taking notice of the blog, and send releases to our contributors, all of whom have day jobs, some of whom are clergy men and women. They have asked Tim what they can do with the releases. Some are interested in pursuing interviews, doing some research on the books, people, products and events that are presented to them.

They want to be reporters.

But they have never done it before. Tim compiled a basic primer on headline writing, linking to source material, verifying information and, of course, the ethics of journalism. As Tim wrote in his note to our bloggers, “Journalists have very, very strict guidelines about what we can, and can’t accept from PR people who hope to elicit some coverage for their product or service in the newspaper. Since you’re blogging on a Post-Dispatch platform, we ask that you, too, abide by these ethical guidelines.”

He included the Post-Dispatch’s ethics guidelines, which I’m not including here. I am including a number of online primers that I’ve shared with Tim for the benefit of our Civil Religion crew. They range from the ethics of journalism and blogging to the basics of reporting and writing.

Maybe you have a similar project that can benefit. And maybe you have other sites to suggest!

journopdx – Journalism basics
Literally, the basics. This is an outline of a session by Michelle V. Rafter at a conference for bloggers. Even the outline would provide good basics for beginners.

Weblog Ethics
From Rebecca Blood’s “Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog.” This stuff stands up.

bighow guides: the online journalism handbook citizen journalism basics
Includes links to some other helpful sites. I particularly like the brief mention of JD Lasica’s and Dan Gillmor’s “five basic principles of citizen journalism.”

Infinite Zoom: Journalism Basics
Journalist Curt Milton started a series on journalism basics on his blog Infinite Zoom, presumably targeted at bloggers. He didn’t get very far, but what’s there is worth looking at.

Citizen Media Law Project
A great resources. It is exactly what its name implies. If you’re not subscribing to the CitMedia blog, you should be.

Society of Professional Journalists: Code of Ethics
Hard to go wrong with the code of ethics of SPJ. It pretty much spells out the ethical issues — and it keeps it short and to the point.

Principles of Journalism | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ)
Like the SPJ code, this is a great primer.

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