“The Story Tells the Facts” címmel kétnapos workshopot tart Luuk Sengers holland újságíró november 16-17-én a Független Médiaközpontban (1064 Budapest Vörösmarty utca 47/a). Az angol nyelvű rendezvény központi témája az adatokra épülő történetek strukturálása, a történemondás különböző technikáinak ötvözése. Online regisztráció: november 10.

Alább részletes angol nyelvű tájékoztatót közlünk a workshop programjáról.

“The Story tells the facts!” – workshop for investigative journalists

The Center for Independent journalism will organize a two-day workshop for investigative journalists on the topic of building and developing stories based on data.

The workshop will be will be conducted by Luuk Sengers, an internationally acknowledged Dutch investigative journalist and trainer who already held successful courses on Computer-Assisted Reporting at the Center for Independent Journalism in 2008.

A growing number of journalists are able to gather/analyze data and apply visualization tools. Very often, however, these well documented stories are dry and difficult to read. Writing skills have somewhat eroded and some of the useful style components – for example observations, rhythm and suspence – seem missing or dead. But facts don’t tell a story – a story tells the facts!

The workshop addresses these practical problems and aims at enhancing writing skills and thus increase the efficiency and outreach of investigative stories and also to encourage networking among journalists to develop common story ideas. The workshop targets investigative journalists working in newsrooms and freelancers from all regions of Hungary.

The workshop will combine different practical methods –  lectures and presentation of case studies,  group and individual exercises , brief discussions among participants and searching for potential story ideas for cross-regional/cross-country collaboration.

The language of the event is English, no translation will be provided. Participation is free of charge, and the online applications for the workshop can be submitted by filling in this registration form till Wednesday, 10 November 2017.

Program Schedule

Day 1 Thursday, 16 November 2017

9:45 – 10:00 – Registration

10:00 – 10:20 – Opening remarks and introductions

Ilona Móricz, Director of the Center for Independent Journalism
Luuk Sengers, investigative journalist and trainer

10:20 – 12:20 Morning session: See it clear, tell it clearly

What is the news? That is a simple question, but often tough to answer. Nevertheless should your final story contain at least one paragraph that unequivocally states what you have discovered and why that is important. In the Story-Based Inquiry method that paragraph is the starting point – and not the end – of your investigation. You will learn how to create hypotheses before you start investigating. It will save you time and anguish later when the deadline looms.

12:20 – 13:00 – Lunch break

13:00 – 17:00 Afternoon session: Structure rules content (including a coffee break)

Whether people will read your story to the last line or not, depends often not on the content, but on the structure. If the outline is not easy to follow, the reader will blame you for making him feel stupid. You will learn how to create an effective outline for a story. Then we will look at stories of the participants to see where the structure could have been improved.

Day 2 – Friday, 17 November 2017

9:30 – 12:30 Show, don’t tell! (including a coffee break)

A paradox of investigative reporting is, that we need masses of data to prove a story, but only need a few well chosen examples to tell it. Readers will remember the examples, not the numbers. You will learn, in exercises, how to describe scenes with people, places and actions in a direct and lively way.

12:30 – 13:00 – Lunch break

13:00 – 16:00 – Side dishes and promotion (including a coffee break)

Don’t force your readers to ‘swallow the elephant in one piece’, as Africans say. Serve side dishes. We will talk about at least 25 different mini-stories that can be taken out of the main piece and served separately. We will use some stories by the participants as examples. We will also look at ways to promote the story and to help provoke the changes you would like to see happen.

16:00 – 16:30 – Wrap-up and evaluation

Sponsor: Embassy of the Netherlands

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