Hosted by the Fojo Media Institute
Media Helping Media is hosted by the Fojo Media Institute at Linnaeus University.
Exercises
Our free exercises provide practical skill-building activities for self-directed learning or classroom use. They enable you to test and improve your knowledge through hands-on practice. Visit our site map for all the content in this and other sections.
Exercise: Developing important news angles
Finding new angles on developing news stories is essential. Journalists must explain how news events impact their audience's lives. This exercise will help reporters find out how.
Exercise: Understanding unconscious bias
This exercise is designed to help journalists understand how unconscious bias can undermine journalistic integrity and distort how news is covered.
Exercise: Packaging for radio news
This exercise sets out the basics for creating a news package for radio. It’s been created for those starting out in radio journalism.
Exercise: Questions every journalist should ask
There are six questions that a journalists should consider asking. They are What? Why? When? How? Where? and Who? This exercise considers their use in journalism.
Exercise: Editorialising is not for news
Learn to recognise and avoid editorialising in news reporting. Ensure accuracy and fairness by keeping a clear line between facts and opinions.
Exercise: Adjectives and adverbs in journalism
Journalists should not waste words. Their writing should be concise and tight. Adjectives and adverbs clutter up news stories and should be avoided wherever possible.
Exercise: Crime reporting for beginners
Crime reporters must balance the public's right to know with ethical duties, ensuring accuracy and fairness while avoiding sensationalism and prejudice.
Exercise: Understanding post-truth in journalism
For journalists, post-truth represents a critical challenge to our core mission of informing the public with accurate, verified information. This exercise deals with some...
Exercise: Active and passive voices
Discover how journalists use the active voice to capture action and seize reader attention. Master impactful writing techniques for fast-paced news stories.
Exercise: Planning a breaking news TV package
Reporting breaking news on TV is a high-pressure race. You must balance real-time events with limited time for fact-checking and sourcing interviews.
Exercise: Fact-checking in news
True journalism requires more than just gathering news. We rigorously examine every detail to maintain the highest factual standards.
Exercise: The inverted pyramid
Inverted pyramid writing puts essential, newsworthy info first, followed by supporting details and background. It ensures readers see the most vital facts straight away.
Exercise: Clichés, jargon & journalese
Journalists need to recognise and then avoid using journalese, jargon, and clichés. Their writing must be clear, easy to understand, and informative. This exercise is designed to help spot all three.
Exercise: Referencing, attribution, and plagiarism
Original journalism often begins by finding a unique, unexplored angle within existing public information or the reporting of others. This exercise looks at what a journalist should do in those situations.
Exercise: Interviewing skills
Understanding how to conduct an interview is essential if a journalist is to uncover previously unknown facts and produce original news stories.
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