Reporterfabrik - the online academy for journalism
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written on 12 October 2019
“Readers are changing faster than we do”, said Cordt Schnibben in 2015, the chief editor of Spiegel magazine’s cultural section. Three years later, alongside David Schraven, managing director of the non-profit research centre CORRECTIV, he founded the Reporterfabrik, a project that intends to smooth and shape everybody’s way into the editorial community.
The way into the editorial community
The Reporterfabrik is a joint project from CORRECTIV and the journalist platform Reporter-Forum e.V that intends to smooth and shape everybody’s way into the editorial community.
Following a completed beta phase, the Reporterfabrik went online in January 2019. Since then, those interested have been able to develop their media skills in over 100 workshops and 40 podcasts, including how to write, blog, research, debate, take photos and cut videos professionally.
Understanding the influence of the media
In the daily flood of news items, users increasingly have to decide for themselves what information they trust and follow. The Reporterfabrik therefore wants to make as many people as possible aware of the influence of the media and instruct everyone on how to create their own posts for social media or their own blogs.
Using journalistic knowledge for society
The Reporterfabrik lecturer and ZDF journalist Maja Weber knows that journalists must also learn how to deal with criticism from their audiences. To this end, the Reporterfabrik wants to guide editors and reporters to work in a transparent manner and find new ways to tell stories.
This should smooth the way into the editorial society, writes the managing director of the Reporterfabrik, David Schraven.
A web academy for modern learning
The offer of the Reporterfabrik is divided into four learning stages.
- What is journalism?
- What a journalist must be able to do
- What a journalist should be able to do
- What good journalists can do
The workshops consist of learning videos, exercises and downloads that summarise the content. Participants can exchange ideas with each other in the forums. The range of workshops on offer is supplemented with face-to-face seminars and webinars, in which each participant can actively take part in the meetings from their home through a link provided.
The offer of the Reporterfabrik includes:
- more than 100 workshops and 1,200 tutorials conveying media knowledge and journalistic skills
- more than 40 podcasts in the format of Reporter2Go, in which journalists report on their work from many print, online and TV editorial departments
- the school offer Reporter4You with which teachers and students can obtain an overview of the foundations of journalism and get more tips on further reading
- the Schulbörse (school exchange), which gives teachers access to more than 300 journalists who offer to visit schools and provide exciting insights into the media world
Famous lecturers at the Reporterfabrik
The first lecturers at the Reporterfabrik included Giovanni di Lorenzo, editor in chief of “Zeit”, the language guru Wolf Schneider, author Doris Dörrie, blogger Franziska Bluhm and the internet pioneer Sascha Lobo.
Sponsors of the Reporterfabrik
The main sponsor of the Reporterfabrik is Deutsche Telekom. It has been actively involved since the beginning. The Robert Bosch Foundation, the LfM Vor Ort NRW Foundation, Facebook and the City of Hamburg have all made the production of courses possible with their sponsorship.
About the author
How can the knowledge of journalists be made accessible to society? How can journalistic content be useful? Friederike asked these questions in her work at CORRECTIV. Since the beginning of 2019, Friederike has coordinated editing and communication at the Reporter4You school exchange. Friederike also organised the Reporter-Forum e.V. and the Reporter Workshop and German Reporter Award events in Berlin. As a reporter for CORRECTIV.Lokal, Friederike works on networking regional media. Previously, during her journalism studies (BA) in Hamburg, Friederike focussed on the influence of social media on journalism and the question of if and how journalists become brands. She also worked for a time at media companies such as Welt, Spiegel TV and Zeit Online.
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