A new round of training sessions on investigative journalism basics was held in Strumica, North Macedonia, with a focus on writing and storytelling.
The course titled “Weaving a Story” began with the young journalists’ reflections on the stories they’d worked on over the last two months with their BIRN Macedonia mentors.
They presented how their stories advanced and discussed their experiences in contacting sources, communication with state and local institutions, data selection, as well as difficulties encountered while working on the stories.
The day continued with sessions on the importance of observation and on how to make use of photos and videos, including basic editing tips and tricks.
On the second day, participants put into practice what they learned the previous day during a visit to the Smolare waterfalls, where they were tasked to write an intro for a feature story and put together a short video. These texts and videos were later presented and jointly discussed with BIRN’s mentors, who gave constructive feedback.
The final day was dedicated to sessions about storytelling where participants were presented with different case studies to illustrate the various ways and approaches they can use to “hook” audiences to their stories.
They were also given a puzzle exercise: they got nine paragraphs of a BIRN article, without the lead, that they had to rearrange logically and write their own lead.
The final event part of the year-long training series for investigative journalism will take place in June.