Journalism Skills for Engaged Citizens is a University of Melbourne course taught by Dr. Denis Muller and Dr. Margaret Simons offered through Coursera. The 8 week course is geared toward the new media publishers and teaches the basics of journalism, interviewing, gathering information, and the ethical and legal implications of practicing journalism.
I thought this class would help me develop my blogging and writing skills because blogs are a part of this new media landscape and some of the highlighted topics were on my action plan.
Each week they posted video lectures, quizzes, and follow ups on the assignments. I really enjoyed the video lectures and found the lessons on the principles of good writing, attribution, and finding things out particularly helpful. The quizzes helped to reinforce the material in the videos, and you could take them as many times as you wanted to ensure understanding.
The assignments were related to a mock investigation into the local government of a fake town. At first I tried to keep up with the assignments, but it seemed like wasted effort. While I love getting grades, I took this course to help improve the quality of this blog. I chose to focus my efforts here rather than spend hours writing fake reports that were only going to get more involved.
Overall I found Muller and Simons engaging and knowledgeable. I have already incorporated some of the things I learned from them into my blog, like writing in a clear and simple manner and focusing on word choice. They also covered topics that aren’t useful for the blog like managing confidential sources and the ethics of interviewing traumatized people, but it was intriguing material nonetheless.
This is a well structured course lead by excellent professors. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to improve their writing skills or dabble in journalism. This course also offers a Course Certificate – Statement of Accomplishment, if you’re into that sort of thing. There are no future sessions currently listed, but based on the feedback I have seen in forums I am sure they will be back.
Do you think bloggers and journalists have overlapping skill sets? Let’s discuss further in the comments.
plannedpreoccupation.com 
My degree is in journalism, although I’ve never had a job in journalism. I think clear writing is a skill that can apply to a lot of professions. It is especially relevant today with so much information being shared on the internet. Writing for a blog, which is solely online, is different than writing for a newspaper. But I see more and more news sources moving online and writing for the online format. Mainly, shorter stories that can be quickly scanned/read and shared on social media.
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I agree that it is a skill that is widely applicable. I have noticed that some of the things I learned in this course have helped as I am writing my project planning documents!
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