The penultimate day of teaching at BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Reporting focussed on pitching and visual storytelling, after picking up Wednesday’s thread of mental wellbeing and advanced data journalism.
Jakub Gornicki, reporter and co-founder of visual storytelling platform Outriders, explained to the participants the process involved in creating engaging stories.
“Journalism does not have to be boring, so we combine art and reporting skills to explain global issues,” he said, while discussing some of the platform’s work in Ukraine and other places.
Visual storytelling can offer a “new angle on already known events”, he said. “We usually post three months after something happened.”
The participants had the chance to build on Wednesday’s discussions concerning data scraping from open sources and how to use artificial intelligence for elementary coding.
Blake Morrison, lead trainer and investigative projects editor with Reuters in New York, led a session on pitching stories. Journalists should not necessarily see themselves as “salesmen”, he said, but “selling the story is like selling yourself”.
“We need to anticipate that your editors will be sceptical, and that they will ask questions,” he said, so journalists should expect to be queried and to offer answers.
The day ended with a workshop on stress management led by A.X. Mino, a programme director at the Self Investigation network, a global non-profit that promotes healthy work culture in the media and communication industries.
Friday will be the last day of workshops before participants get to pitch their story ideas on Saturday.