Since the start of the pandemic, COVID-19 stories have appeared on the homepages of publications around the globe, making health stories mainstream. As the beat gains popularity, reporters new to health reporting can fall into avoidable pitfalls, such as failing to put research into meaningful context.
The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) is honoring more than 50 journalists for COVID-19 reporting in five languages. Their coverage has explained complicated science, revealed pandemic-related corruption and exposed inequalities that have harmed society’s most vulnerable.
As governments around the world roll out COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, new strains of the virus have fueled growing concerns among experts.
COVID-19 has forced newsrooms to either innovate, or be left behind.
At NBCLX, digital teams had to pivot to find a way to carry out their work amid restrictions on in-person reporting. With a bit of creativity, however, they discovered new forms of storytelling that would spotlight their communities’ resilience.
The convergence of the racial justice movement with the ongoing global health crisis generated challenging working conditions for reporters. The personal nature of the racial unrest compounded these challenges for journalists of color, in particular. “As Black people, we’re battling two pandemics — we're battling racism and we're battling COVID-19,” said journalist, filmmaker and freelance photographer Cydney Tucker during an ICFJ Global Health Crisis Reporting Forum webinar in December.
We’ve had by far one of the most unexpected and challenging years in history with a global pandemic, and one that’s hit an already struggling journalism industry hard. Despite these challenges, journalists from around the world came together in the ICFJ Global Health Crisis Reporting Forum to learn from medical experts, epidemiologists, veteran health reporters, fact-checkers and each other to cover what is likely to be the story of the century, a 21st-century pandemic.
Newsroom management can be a balancing act between people and content, and the COVID-19 pandemic has made finding that balance even more difficult. During a recent IJNet/ICFJ Global Health Crisis Reporting Forum webinar AJ+ Supervising Executive Producer Jon Laurence acknowledged the difficult balance and shared ways he and his team have tried to adapt.
With accessible technology and social tools available to anyone, media is no longer exclusive to journalists and journalism-adjacent careers. With just a few cheap — or even free — tools, anyone can create a podcast. The challenge becomes creating compelling content that the audience actually wants.
Communicating data can feel like an overwhelming task. As journalists, how can we translate extensive numbers-based research and analysis into coherent, comprehensible reporting?
Data journalists have honed this skill set. They’ve refined how to best present data-related findings to most effectively inform their readers.
