How do you know what is real information anymore? Whether it’s researching a company you want to work for, finding reliable information about a medical condition or vetting a statistic for an article, quality intel is all.
High-quality info gives any writer a major commercial edge that is reflected in the premium fees offered for investigative features and non-fiction and historical fiction book advances. However, many don’t have skills beyond simple Google searches and Wikipedia.
This seminar will cover:
- Basic online reporting skills overview
- Advanced Google search tricks
- The difference between search engines (Bing vs. Google vs. Yahoo, etc.)
- Info on for-pay research services (LexisNexis, Factiva, etc.)
- How to evaluate quality sources
- Using Wikipedia as a jumping-off point for actual reporting
- Dealing with dead-ends
- Creating alerts to keep you in touch with your topic
Instructor: Katherine Wessling has spent more than two decades as a fact checker and reporter. She honed her skills as a researcher at Esquire magazine working with writers such as Tom Wolfe, Jim Harrison, John Berendt, Pete Hamill and Peter Maas.
Since then, she has created the research department at Good Housekeeping magazine, been a research editor at O, The Oprah Magazine, gone in-house as a research consultant for Mediabistro and freelanced in the research departments of over a dozen other major national media outlets.
As a corporate communications consultant for News Corp., Katherine mined online news sources and blogs daily to create the go-to list for media news.
She has also done primary research for playwright Eve Ensler, YA writer and style journalist Veronica Chambers, investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Vicky Ward, and others.
Dates & Time: TBA
Cost: TBA
Location: TBA
Have a question about Ideasmyth courses? Contact courses@ideasmyth.com.