Media Helping Media has a wide selection of free training material for journalism educators to download, adapt for their own purposes, and use.
Whether you are training young journalists starting off in their careers or established journalists wanting to improve their skills, there is material available to help you design courses, workshops, and lessons.
We have also created training material for managers and those whose job it is to train trainers (ToT) as part of a capacity building programme.
All the material is free to access. No registration is needed and no personal details are required. We have tried to create resources to meet every need, from exercises that can either be used by individual journalists or with small groups to six-week long course modules which you can use to build a much longer training programme.
The material is already being used by in-house trainer, external teachers and consultants, and academics around the world. All the training resources below are based on best-practice articles produced by professional journalists in the MHM network, and published on our site.
Below are some of the products available.
For those who are new to journalism
Our quick guide checklists sum up the main points of selected Media Helping Media (MHM) training articles for journalists to test what they have learnt.
Our self-teaching exercises are designed to help those journalists who don’t have access to training. They are about an hour long and can be self-scheduled.
For trainers and lecturers
We have tailored much of the content on MHM to try to meet specific needs of those who deliver training. The following tools are for educators to download, adapt to local circumstances, and use.
Our workshops – which are two-hours long for those who are already familiar with a topic, or four-hours long for those who are new to the particular subject – are designed for trainers to download and adapt then deliver for trainees who have limited time available.
Our day-long lesson outlines are for journalism trainers to adapt to meet their own particular newsroom needs. They are more in-depth than workshops and are for those creating short training courses.
Our course modules are designed to be used by trainers to create bespoke training programmes to meet specific needs. Each contains between 12 and 36 lessons, woven together to be used as part of a longer course. Again, all the material can be adapted to meet specific educational needs.
The day-long intensive refreshers are for those who want to revise the material covered in the six-week course modules.
Background reading
It’s important that all those downloading the exercises, workshops, lessons, modules, and refreshers read and understand the related material published on MHM before adapting the content to meet their own local needs.
All the training materials listed above have links to the MHM content on which they are based. Below is an introduction to that content.
Our basic journalism section contains:
- Getting started: We have more than 50 articles which are designed to be used as personal learning tools. This could be useful if you are a journalism student or have just started as a journalist and want to improve your skills.
- Editorial ethics: Those starting off in journalism should also familiarise themselves with our 10 articles on editorial ethics, which include topics such as accuracy and integrity. These are essential reading for all journalists.
For established journalists
For senior journalists we have:
- Advanced journalism: More than 50 articles covering advanced journalism. These are for journalists who want to refresh or expand their skills.
- Investigative journalism: We have 10 articles on investigative journalism, for those producing in-depth reporting.
- Ethical scenarios: We have more than 20 editorial scenarios which are based on real-life ethical dilemmas.
For senior editors and media managers
We have a collection of useful tools for editors and managers all of which have been developed and used by MHM trainers. We also have:
- Management: Our media management section covers topics such as how to implement newsroom convergence and how to set up a digital-first strategy.
- Strategy: We have a strategy section which covers topics such as setting up a sales strategy and the value of audience research.
Tried, tested and regularly updated
All the material shared on MHM has been used in the training of journalists and media managers around the world.
It has been donated by experienced journalists who want to spread the standards and values of accurate, impartial and ethical journalism that is produced in the public interest.
Scroll through all 400+ resources
If you want to scroll through a list of all the material on MHM, visit our site map.