We’ve been hard at work. Over the last few months, we’ve been editing the latest version of our Mobile Journalism for Environment Reporting Course and we’re so excited to share it with you all. More than 10,000 people have gone through some iteration of this course. Both in-person and online.
The course will remain totally free. But it is password protected, so if you or someone you know wants access, please let us know at editor@inoldnews.com and we’ll give you all the log-in details.
Watch the course intro here:
In many ways, this course has been years in the making. We’ve refined how we convey these ideas and skills over the last 8 years into this course, which you can follow at your own pace. Our bite-sized videos are for anyone who is new to video, or new to environment reporting. We’ve spent many months scripting, shooting, editing and making resources for this course. We wanted the course to allow anyone to experience the possibilities mobile reporting can open up. You only need a weekend to watch the tutorials and try out the exercises.
Right now, ahead of COP27 on November 6th in Egypt, it feels like the best time to release it. The world will be watching as people and organisations come together for weeks of negotiations to try to find solutions to climate change. It’s the perfect opportunity for journalists to show how climate change is already making its mark on our planet, and affecting millions of people. Compared to when we first got started in journalism, it feels like the world and the media are more prepared to have discussions about how our planet is changing and becoming more unpredictable. Cyclones, floods and droughts are hitting us harder than ever. It will be important to tell these stories in different mediums and languages so that we can reach as many people as possible.
So here’s what you can expect to learn in our course. In its current iteration, the course is 12 chapters and just over an hour long. We cover everything from where to find story ideas, to getting started with shooting and editing. You’ll learn how to record interviews, piece-to-cameras and B-Roll. You’ll also learn where to find creative commons footage and music, so you can protect yourself from copyright strikes. Over time, we’ll be adding additional chapters based on requests from students, as well as some other chapters we think would be helpful, like YouTube strategy and how to turn your video into a podcast.
You can either watch the course from the beginning, or just watch the tutorials you find most interesting. We’ve tried to make the learning process easier by following the same story thread throughout the course. And you can also download video clips we’ve used in the tutorial to follow along.
Our next goal is to make this course accessible to as many people by translating it into Hindi, Bengali, French, Spanish, Swahili and other languages. We will now focus on building the resources (like translator fees, etc) to make this possible. In the meantime, you can support us by helping spread the word and sharing this newsletter with someone you think would find this course useful. Or ask them to email editor@inoldnews.com for access.
Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter. We’ll be back with more interviews with journalists and how they do their work in a few weeks.
Correction: A previous version of the newsletter said that COP27 would be held in Cairo while it is actually going to be held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.