Weekend 1-Day Seminar: Advanced Research and Reporting with Katherine Wessling

When: Saturday, 10am-3pm with a lunch break in the middle, dates TBA
EARLY BIRD PRICING: $150;  Regular Price: $175
Location: The Writers Room, 740 Broadway, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10003
Closest Subways: 6 to Astor or N/R to 8th Street/NYU
Limited to 15 students

Whether you’re writing a nonfiction book, a magazine article, or checking the facts about anything that really matters to your health, home or livelihood, the ability to cultivate and interview sources and/or find the information you need online is important.

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.

Getting original information from the internet and out of experts is key to tapping into the premium fees offered for investigative features and non-fiction book advances. All are encouraged to bring their specific research challenges so they can be addressed in the seminar.

In addition to a thorough resources handout, this course 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
• Basic interview manners, charm and protocol
• Discussion of “off” vs. “on” the record
• How to get information out of your sources (even reluctant ones)
• How to get a sense of whether you can rely on the information you get
• Cultivating sources

Class design:

• Instructor will give personal attention to each client’s project and accompanying research-related queries
• Instructor will lead discussions on the abovementioned topics
• In-class practice via role-playing

Have a question about Master Class Room courses? Contact Courses@Ideasmyth.com.

Instructor: Katherine Wessling, currently the head of the research department at Dr. Oz THE GOOD LIFE magazine, 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.