20 Oct THE SECRETS OF JOURNALISM: DECODING MISINFORMATION, MONEY AND POWER
Secrets of Journalism is a course that lifts the lid on the news business. It aims to give students an insider’s understanding of a pivotal sector that affects the decisions of CEOs and political leaders every day.
It will equip students with the skills they need to become sophisticated consumers of news, able to judge the quality of what they are reading and avoid traps that ensnare the unsuspecting. They will also learn how to create gripping stories of their own.
Students will be coached on navigating the deluge of news that hits us from an array of sources every day. They will discover how world-class news organizations such as the FT make themselves stand out from the crowd and how they decide what is a story.
A good reporter’s skills are useful in jobs far beyond journalism and students will learn the tricks of the trade, helping them to build professional relationships, root out hard-to-find information, and deliver original insights that resonate with the zeitgeist.
They will learn how business leaders and politicians try — and sometimes fail — to shape the news to their advantage, gaining exclusive behind-the-scenes insights into communications battles at the intersection of money and power.
This course will be of value to anyone whose work involves research, analysis and understanding what the news means for business, investing and government.
BARNEY JOPSON
Barney Jopson is an award-winning journalist who has been a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times for more than 20 years. He has been posted to Tokyo, New York, Washington DC and Nairobi and currently covers Spain and Portugal for the FT from a base in Madrid. Over the years he has interviewed CEOs and African dictators and covered news ranging from US elections and corporate scandals to climate disasters and wars. His work has been recognized with prizes in the US, UK, Spain and Hong Kong.
Skills
1. By the end of the course students will be able to critically analyze news stories from a variety of sources, making judgements on quality and reliability based on the nature of the publication, the span of story content and the attribution of key information.
2. Students will understand why some events or decisions become news stories and others do not. They will develop a sense of how to capture an audience’s attention and how to find significance in matters that could at first glance appear obscure.
3. Students will grasp how companies communicate in different ways to employees, investors and journalists, gaining an appreciation of how messaging is central to achieving broader corporate goals.
4. Students will learn how to craft a message to persuade and win political arguments, absorbing best practice lessons from leaders and lobbyists waging high-stakes battles.
Schedule
Which dates?
20-jan
27-jan
03-feb
10-feb
17-feb
24-feb
What day?
TUESDAYS
What time?
9.00-10.30