Teaching resources for instructors: The Basics

Looking for resources to use in the classroom to help you teach the foundations of our craft? Here, Mary McGuire has curated a list of tools and resources for teaching the following:

• Reporting
• Writing
• Interviewing
• Ethics

And for more teaching resources:

Teaching resources for instructors: Broadcast/visual journalism

Teaching resources for instructors: New Media

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Teaching Reporting

• The Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting has an archive of investigative journalism projects, as well as links to resources for investigative journalism

• The National Newspaper Awards posts the lists of winners and nominees for their latest awards in a range of categories, complete with links to the entries.

• A sheet of tips about how to report on anything from The New Yorker’s George Packer
   
• The Magazine School, a project by Janice Paskey, helps educators highlight outstanding Canadian content by getting the stories behind the stories of Western Magazine Award nominees and winners.

Teaching Writing

• A long list of tip sheets about writing and editing from the Poynter Institute

• Tips for writing well from William Zinsser, the author of On Writing Well

• A library of outstanding examples of narrative journalism from the Neiman Foundation

• A library of essays from veteran journalists on the craft of writing

• George Orwell’s 5 rules for effective writing

Teaching Interviewing

• Some of the best advice about interviewing  for journalists comes from Canadian author and journalist, John Sawatsky, who has been giving workshops to journalists in Canada and around the world for years. His guidelines for getting the most out of interviews are outlined in a series of articles published in the American Journalism Review in October 2000.         

• Pulitzer-prize winning reporter, Eric Nalder, formerly of the Seattle Times, now with the San Jose Mercury News, has given workshops on interviewing to reporters for years. His tips for doing great interviews are posted at various sites online.

• Reflections from journalists, including the Toronto Star’s Joanna Smith, about how they decide whether to interview someone by phone, email or in person.

Teaching Ethics

• Ethical guidelines for journalists from The Canadian Association of Journalists Ethics Advisory Committee

• The CBC’s updated guide to its Journalistic Standards and Practices, which covers everything from conflicts of interest, to live reporting, to the use of social media by journalists.

• A collection of tip sheets for teaching journalism ethics from Poynter