On November 19-20, “Journalists for the Future” NGO organized a workshop for journalists entitled “Explanatory Journalism in Digital Media Industry”.
The workshop supported by the U.S. Embassy in Armenia aimed at presenting the new trends of the media industry to the participants as well as providing them with more effective tools to deliver information in the digital environment.
15 participants from different media outlets of Armenia got introduced with the basics of explanatory journalism and data visualization in the digital environment and practiced their new skills through individual and group works.
Welcoming the workshop participants, John (Jake) Goshert, Information Officer of Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy Yerevan, with 12 years of work experience in journalism, emphasized the importance of the project greatly evaluating the achievement of new ways of thinking and alternative skills to remain up-to-date with trends of modern journalism and digital communications.
On November 19-20, “Journalists for the Future” NGO organized a workshop for journalists entitled “Explanatory Journalism in Digital Media Industry”.
The workshop supported by the U.S. Embassy in Armenia aimed at presenting the new trends of the media industry to the participants as well as providing them with more effective tools to deliver information in the digital environment.
15 participants from different media outlets of Armenia got introduced with the basics of explanatory journalism and data visualization in the digital environment and practiced their new skills through individual and group works.
Welcoming the workshop participants, John (Jake) Goshert, Information Officer of Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy Yerevan, with 12 years of work experience in journalism, emphasized the importance of the project greatly evaluating the achievement of new ways of thinking and alternative skills to remain up-to-date with trends of modern journalism and digital communications.
The workshop was conducted by JFF president Suren Deheryan, graphic designer Sedrak Mkrtchyan and IT manager Hovhannes Aghajanyan. On the invitation of JFF the workshop was delivered also by Nino Macharashvili, data journalist and project coordinator at JumpStart Georgia, who introduced the main principles on how to work with spreadsheets through theoretical and practical assignments and select the key topics amongst the open data.
“Explanatory journalism is a form or genre of reporting that enables to cover a topic with all its nuances, providing the ongoing story in more accessible format by means of various multimedia tools and applications. As to infographics and data visualization, they make it easy to understand complex information containing quite a lot of numbers,” says JFF president Suren Deheryan and adds, “With the help of this project we try to establish roots for explanatory journalism and data visualization providing users with reliable and comprehensive answers on key topics.”
“The workshop was quite interesting and educational. Since I am a radio journalist, data visualization and explanatory journalism were something new to me,” says Gohar Sharoyan, one of the workshop participants. “During the workshop I mastered my skills of working with numbers and statistics”.
Journalist Mariam Chakhoyan from Hetq.am says that it was an exceptionally useful workshop. “Besides new insights and skills, the workshop provided also vital details on recent trends in digital communications. It was quite important also the knowledge that I gained on the concept of explanatory journalism, its approaches, and the effective use of visualizing tools,” she adds.
“A1plus” online TV editor Karine Asatryan notes, “For many years I have been working in the media field, but during these 2 days I realized that I need to get a textbook of math to recall all the formulas that will help me to work more professionally with numbers from the viewpoint of journalism.”
Based on the topics identified during the workshop the participants are expected to prepare stories that will be posted on Ampop.am interactive, multimedia website created by JFF.
More news regarding JFF initiative on “Data Visualization and Explanatory Journalism” can be accessed on JFF and Ampop Media facebook pages.
The workshop photos can be accessed here.
Source: JFF