The newspaper industry has endured a difficult year, with blows to the credibility of our content and our circulation claims. I want to close the year with an encouraging report. Posted, December 14, 2004 By Steve Buttry Back to Training Tracks

Tough times don't quench the thirst for training

The newspaper industry has endured a difficult year, with blows to the credibility of our content and our circulation claims. I want to close the year with an encouraging report.

Though recent layoffs at some prominent newspapers underscore that these are tough times economically, I am encouraged by the number of organizations that continue to invest in the future through journalism training.

Not enough, not by a long shot. But I've had one of my busiest years ever in training and I want to thank you for sharing in the fun and invite you to help me continue the fun. This year has underscored for me more than ever how thirsty journalists are for training and I've been encouraged by how many newsrooms and other organizations are trying to satisfy that thirst.

First I want to praise the many newsrooms and companies who believe enough in their staffs to invest in bringing in trainers to present workshops and individual coaching for their employees. I've been privileged to train this year for these newsrooms and companites: Vancouver Island News Group, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Scottsbluff (Neb.) Star-Herald, Grass Valley (Calif.) Union, Tahoe-Carson Area Newspapers, Ames (Iowa) Tribune, Nursing Spectrum and Nurse Week magazines, North Platte (Neb.) Telegraph, Times of Northwest Indiana and Saint John (New Brunswick) Telegraph-Journal. I know many other companies have brought many other trainers in to present other programs for their staffs.

And many newsrooms use people on their staffs to provide training. I have presented workshops and provided individual coaching for my colleagues at the Omaha World-Herald, coached our summer interns and arranged training sessions by other colleagues.

Conferences and seminars remain an important part of journalism training. I couldn't possibly list all the organizations providing training through conferences, but I'll run through a few that I've been involved with:

• I've led discussions this year at two seminars presented by the American Press Institute (http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/). I heard high praise also from friends who attended API's third "Train the Trainer" program in October. This seminar, funded by the Knight Foundation, trained 20 of our colleagues in presentation skills, so they can lead more effective training programs back in their newsrooms or back with their organizations. I was in the first "Train the Trainer" program last year and learned a great deal about teaching our craft to colleagues.
• State newspaper associations provide valuable, affordable training at annual conventions and at conferences planned specifically to offer training. I've led workshops this year for the Minnesota Free Paper Association, Virginia Press Association and Kansas Press Association.
• The National Writers' Workshops (http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=73271), co-sponsored by the Poynter Institute and newspapers around the country, continued to provide affordable training, mostly on spring weekends. I've been attending these great regional programs for 10 years now. This year I spoke at the Wilmington Writers' Workshop, the oldest of the National Writers' Workshops, presented by the News Journal in Wilmington, Del.
• Other regional organizations present affordable regional training. I am on the board of the Mid-America Press Institute (http://www.mpinews.org/). I led a couple sessions for a seminar for copy editors in November and attended parts of a February program on management and a June program on covering sports.
• For Canadian journalists, the Ryerson Journalism Alumni Association presents a similar one-day program in Toronto called Wordstock. I was delighted to present workshops at Wordstock for the second year in a row. The Canadian Association of Journalists (http://www.caj.ca/) also presents similar programs. I spoke at one in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The Canadian Association of Newspaper Editors (http://www.cane.ca ) presents a two-day training program in a different location each year. This year Ryerson's Don Gibb and I led the workshops for a seminar in Winnipeg.
• Though I'm hopelessly rooted in words, even I learned a little from a Society for News Design (http://www.snd.org ) quick course in Omaha.
• I benefited greatly from my first Nieman (http://nieman.harvard.edu/narrative ) conference, a March gathering on narrative editing. I'm hearing rave reviews of the December conference on narrative writing.
• The International Center for Journalists (http://www.icfj.org/) provides outstanding opportunities for journalists in countries where freedom of the press is an emerging and fragile concept. I was pleased that ICFJ sent Irena Frlan, a reporter from Novi List in Croatia, to my newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald for three weeks. ICFJ also translated my training materials into Spanish and Portuguese and posted them online at the International Journalists' Network site (http://www.ijnet.org ).
• Other organizations are working around the world to train journalists. Mediacenter Sarajevo (http://www.media.ba/Sarajevo ) translated some of my training materials into Bosnian. Media Mentors is training journalists in Nigeria. My friend Hal Foster has been working with journalists in Ukraine, where the controversy over the recent election underscores the importance of open government and free press. The Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships and the Foster Davis Fellowships for African journalists provide excellent training opportunities in the United States for foreign journalists. Again this year, I was privileged to host a Foster Davis Fellow, Themba Molefe of the Sowetan in South Africa.
• Of course, the Poynter Institute (http://www.poyner.org/ ), which sponsors the Foster Davis Fellowships along with the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism, remains our industry leader in training. In addition to its seminars in St. Petersburg, Poynter sponsors the National Writers' Workshops, which I've already mentioned. A highlight of my year was the annual conference of trainers that Poynter hosts. I've been pleased a few times to contribute to Poynter Online, which daily stimulates discussion within the news industry about our craft. A new Poynter program - News University (http://www.newsu.org/), funded by the Knight Foundation - offers online training for journalists. By the end of the year we should be launching my first News U course, "Beat Basics and Beyond," for reporters starting on beats. It's a humbling (and important) experience for a veteran trainer to fumble with the process of learning new technology and new teaching methods. I hope to become more adept by developing further courses for News U in the year ahead. Howard Finberg and his staff just offered a couple new courses you can take online, Lead Lab, Color in News Design.
• You will see references throughout this column to the Knight Foundation (http://www.knightfdn.org ) and the various programs it funds. No one is doing more to increase the news industry's investment in training. By spending its own money and by encouraging companies to invest in their employees, the Knight Foundation elevates our craft immeasurably. Tomorrow's Workforce, (http://www.tomorrowswork.org )based at Northwestern University, coordinates the various Knight efforts. I'm planning to help in an effort by Tomorrow's Workforce in the coming year to measure investment in training and the return.
• Privately organized groups of writers in newsrooms and communities push each other to improve their work. The Inland Sea Writers in McCook, Neb., and Oberlin, Kan., organize an annual conference to which I spoke this year.
• This list wouldn't be complete without mentioning this Web site. Dolf Els of Media24 in South Africa continues his tireless work as Webmaster. We have added lots of training materials to "No Train, No Gain" this year, including this column. If you do any training, Dolf and I would be delighted to add your handouts or articles to the site. Please send them to me and I will be sure that we get them posted. If you attend a training program that provides helpful handouts, please send me those as well, along with any contact information you might have. I will ask the authors if they would contribute to the site.
• I also taught classes for Ad Astra and Arete, Creighton University's summer camps for gifted junior high and high school students. Everyone should sit in sometime on an editorial board meeting in which junior high students discuss their stand on softer toilet paper in the dorms (they came down in favor).

The list above doesn't include a couple of important programs that started this year:

• The Learning Newsroom (http://www.learningnewsroom.org/), a joint project of the American Press Institute and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, got rolling this year in three newsrooms, the Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind., Citizen-Times in Asheville, N.C., and Telegraph in Nashua, N.H.. Over three years, this program, led by Vickey Williams and funded by the Knight Foundation, will launch the Learning Newsroom at 12 different newspapers of varying sizes.
• NewsTrain (http://www.newstrain.org/) - another Knight-funded program, operated by the Associated Press Managing Editors - took its two-day seminars for front-line editors to 10 cities around the United States this year. NewsTrain, directed by Lil Swanson, plans to present training in 15 more cities in 2005, including St. Louis, where I'm on the planning committee for the host organization, the Mid-America Press Institute.

This column hasn't covered nearly all the organizations working to help journalists grow. Investigative Reporters and Editors, various academic Knight centers that provide professional training, various groups organized by beats and demographic groups, Society of Professional Journalists and other groups also are doing outstanding work. And lots of independent trainers, including Rosalie Stemer, Matt Baron, Edward Miller, Michael Quintanilla, Nick Russell, Bill Dedman and Don Fry, provide outstanding and inspiring programs in their areas of specialty.

And the beat goes on. For 2005, I already have booked return visits to the Vancouver Island News Group, API, Inland Press Association and the North Dakota Newspaper Association. I will be doing my first workshops for Chesapeake Publishing, the Bakersfield Californian and the Religion Newswriters Association. Several other organizations are making plans for possible workshops. If you would like to schedule something for your organization or get more information about my workshops, please let me know.

This will be my final column until after the holidays. Tell me what you and your organization are doing to improve training for journalists. I'd like to spread the word.