This compressed one-day course provides an intensive overview of the essential skills and strategy required to run a sustainable, audience-focused digital news operation.
It covers newsroom convergence, digital storytelling, data/AI, and editorial management.
The course consolidates the essential content of our six-week module covering digital journalism and production into an intensive, practical single-day programme, ensuring your journalistic foundation remains robust, accurate, and fair.
We recommend that trainers circulate the recommended reading resources listed below and encourage participants to read them before attending this refresher.
Learning objectives
- Design and manage a converged, digital-first newsroom structure.
- Master the principles of online content production and multiplatform adaptation.
- Develop effective audience engagement strategies, including social media integration.
- Apply data journalism fundamentals and evaluate the ethical uses and limits of AI in news.
- Organise teams and resources for efficient, sustainable multiplatform production.
Programme schedule (4 sessions)
Session 1: The converged newsroom (9:00 – 10:30)
- Focus: Organisational structure, roles, systems thinking, and the digital-first philosophy.
- Activity: Workshop: Map an ideal converged newsroom structure.
- Core reading:
(10:30 – 10:45) Break
Session 2: Digital content, audience, and social media (10:45 – 12:15)
- Focus: Online production, managing updates, multiplatform content presentation, and audience engagement/crowdsourcing.
- Activity: Workshop: Rewrite a breaking news story for web, mobile, and social media.
- Core reading:
(12:15 – 13:15) – Lunch
Session 3: Data, CAR, and artificial Intelligence (AI) (1:15 – 2:45)
- Focus: Data journalism fundamentals, Computer-Assisted Reporting (CAR), the uses and ethical limits of AI, and dealing with algorithmic bias.
- Activity: Workshop: Use a free data tool to find a story in a public dataset.
- Core reading:
(2:45 – 3:00) – Break
Session 4: Leadership and future strategy
- Focus: Efficient team organisation, resource management, and developing a sustainable strategy in the face of the continuous evolution of news.
- Activity: Simulation: Assign roles and plan multiplatform coverage for a major breaking story.
- Core reading:
Concluding summary and discussion (4:30 – 5:00)
Successful digital journalism requires integrated leadership, a commitment to platform-specific storytelling, and the responsible application of technology (data/AI). The overall aim is to move beyond legacy practices to establish a resilient, audience-centric news strategy.
End the session with a group discussion on what was learnt during the day and what participants will apply in their work.
