The Daily News braintrust is about to convene with the aim of
redesigning and refocusing our journalism workshop series.  In the
last year, our free five-part training cycle has been very well
received and has drawn over a hundred attendees.

In the next few weeks, we'll be hosting an interviewing workshop and a
neighborhood reporter orientation.  If you've never attended one of
our workshops, or would like to get started as a neighborhood
reporter, these would both be great places to start.

Later on into the winter, you'll start to see some changes in both the
topics and the methods of our workshops.  The first change you might
notice is the addition of a new (and because I'm an audio nerd, I find
it exciting) radio journalism workshop.  We're going to begin
developing it soon with our friends at the Chicago Independent Radio
Project.  Soon to follow will be our first foray into the world of
news podcasting.

Our new editor, David McClendon, and I are going to be sitting down to
think through how we can best keep our training program relevant to
the increasingly experienced crew of neighborhood reporters that we
work with.  You may see new workshop topics such as how to use FOIA,
interviewing public officials, and feature writing coming in the
future.  We're also going to be developing these new workshops (and
rehashing the old) to make them more participatory and engaging.

What topics would you like to see included?  Have you seen any models
for regular workshop series that you think we could learn from?
Comment or email me at Frank (at) chitowndailynews (dot) org