Facttactic

Corporate and technical writers

Journalism

innovative online training for Māori journalists

Congrats to Aotearoa Media Collective for the release of their second online training resource for Māori journalists.

AMC last week released the Taumatua Programme, a series of four e-learning modules that explore the importance of building and strengthening relationships between the media and Māori.

The programme follows on from AMC’s Kōmiromiro Programme, a series of seven e-learning modules designed to strengthen Māori journalism, that was released last year.

Kōmiromiro includes training on interviewing techniques, court reporting, local government reporting, feature and opinion writing and much more, and has contributions from some of New Zealand’s most prominent Māori journalists.

You can find both programmes here: https://matamedia.co.nz/maori-journalism-training-resources/

Facttactic is proud to have played a small role in getting both ground-breaking programmes online and looks forward to working further with Aotearoa Media Collective to help further strengthen Māori journalism in Aotearoa.

new resource for Māori writers

I was privileged to build an online magazine called Mata Media (http://matamedia.co.nz/) last week for Aotearoa Media Collective.

Mata Media has been set up as an online platform to publish Māori journalism and opinions from Māori perspectives, targeting specifically writing that may not find a home anywhere else.

It’s a great concept (and not a bad-looking site!!), and I’ll look forward to reading the work on it as it grows over time.

be the editor of your own online newspaper

I like the idea behind the Paper.li service. It lets you easily set up and automatically send feeds from Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and RSS into a pre-built online newspaper.

Every day Paper.li monitors your feeds and from them builds a newspaper-like page of clearly laid out articles with headlines, photos and links, and sends you the latest edition. (You can also manually add any web content you like to a newspaper.)

If you like the content you receive, simply push a button and send it to your social media followers; or if you are confident your feeds will always provide relevant information, you can set the paper to automatically send itself out every day. People can also subscribe to your newspaper.

There are hundreds of thousands of papers around the world.

The paper.li site has a community area with tips and hints on how to use the service. [Read more…] about be the editor of your own online newspaper

case studies — what are they good for?

Well-structured case studies are a powerful and easy way to show the results you achieve for your clients and establish your credibility.

Case studies are typically a written article about work you have done for your clients — the input you provided and the results your work got in providing your clients with benefits they did not have before.

Case studies are great to help:

  • highlight your skills and your ability to deliver successful solutions to your clients.
  • build your credibility by showing the organisations who have hired you or bought your products.
  • build strong relations with the case study clients by giving them free publicity and promoting their work.

[Read more…] about case studies — what are they good for?

is this pen mightier than the computer?

I’ve found a pen that records and remembers what it writes and also records sounds and then links the recordings to the words that were being written at the time … when I first read about it I was blown away by the concept.

We don’t generally use this blog for product promotion, but as a writer and a regular interviewer who needs to record conversations, the Livescribe pen is one very cool piece of high-tech equipment.

But at $500 I won’t be buying one. Why? Well, when I can buy a full-spec computer for less than twice the price and a good quality digital voice recorder for well under half the price, I can’t see the value in that price point. If I could I would snap one up because it’s a neat toy, but unless the price drops a bit below its new-technology price, I’ll be sticking to my trusty blue biros and my hard-working, hard-wearing voice recorder.

believe what you read?!

A common query we get is how we get clients in to the media, and then how can we trust that the media won’t distort or twist our clients’ messages.

We think it’s simple: our clients that get into the media do so because they have a good story to tell, a story that’s worth hearing and worth airing. Our job is to help present the story to the media in a way that is clear, attractive and easily understood by a busy newsroom. The media in New Zealand are, by and large, responsive and responsible towards a good story honestly told; and our ongoing experience is that our clients are well-served by targeted media attention.

That is not to say they don’t get it wrong on occasion … and here’s a good read, a Canadian blogger’s list of media mistakes and corrections for 2009: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections.