(List courtesy of J-Lab.)
Check out some clever ideas. Find an expert. Do some database research. These resources are designed to help you jumpstart your reporting.
Yahoo! Style Guide
The styleguide includes entries on online writing best practices, modifying your site for search engine optimization and an Ask an Editor section where visitors can ask questions about their particular issue.
Beginning Reporting
This site, written by Jim Hall, a reporter for the Fredericksburg, VA Free Lance-Star, is divided into three main sections and 17 subsections. The main sections reflect the principal duties of the journalist: reporting, writing and rewriting.
Digital Journalist Survival Guide: A Glossary of Tech Terms You Should Know
Jennifer 8 Lee (a former member of Poynter’s National Advisory Board) wrote a glossary of terms for journalists operating in the digital space. These terms and acronyms are essential when understanding how the Internet is populated with content, and how that content makes its way onto other networks and devices. The glossary relates to web standards, programming, online tools, social networking, online advertising and basic technology.
My High School Journalism
My.HSJ.org hosts stories, photos, video, podcasts and other forms of multimedia journalism created by high school students. More than 3,000 student news outlets are connected to the site. It was created by the American Society of News Editors and offers student journalists an easy way to gain presence on the Web. According to the site, “We supply the Web space and online tools. You supply the content - student-generated stories, photos, video, audio and graphics. We only ask that you update your site during the academic year and keep us up-to-date about the status of your newspaper, the adviser and contact information.”
Citizen Media Law Project
The Citizen Media Law Project is hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. It’s a new pro bono initiative that connects lawyers from across the country with online journalists and digital media creators who need legal help. Lawyers participating in OMLN will provide qualifying online publishers with pro bono and reduced fee legal assistance on a broad range of legal issues, including business formation and governance, copyright licensing and fair use, employment and freelancer agreements, access to government information, pre-publication review, and representation in litigation.
Knight Digital Media Center
The Knight Digital Media Center is a partnership between the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism that provides fellowships and multimedia training resources for aspiring New Media journalists.
Rich Gordon’s Online Community Cookbook (PDF)
In the past year or so, the newspaper industry has devoted considerable attention to online communities. Newspapers have launched blogs, opened up discussion via article comments, built new online communities themselves (for instance, dozens of "moms" sites) and begun to experiment with the new world of social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Medill's Rich Gordon ties all of these developments together into a structured format in order to understand, build, and sustain online communities.
Center for Social Media’s Guide to Fair Use in Online Video
This guide by the Center for Social Media at American University's School of Communication is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances.
IJNet’s 10 Steps to Citizen Journalism Online
The International Center for Journalists and IJNet.org created this interactive training module as a basic introduction to hyperlocal news sites and blogs. You will need the Adobe Flash player to view the module.
The New West FAQ for Online Community Journalism Entrepreneurs
Jonathan Weber, editor and founder of NewWest.net, created this FAQ for those interested in creating local online news sites. Weber covers why he started New West, its revenue models and expected profits, how to get content, what technology is available, who the competitors are and more.
Jump Start Your Reporting
Do you need to find an expert fast, research your U.S. Senator's voting record, investigate a local nonprofit? Here are some databases that can provide some shortcuts.
Journalism Training Sites
Here are some web sites that offer even more journalism training. Check them out.
Journalist's Resource
A free, open-access site that makes scholarly research more accessible for journalists, journalism educators, and students.
