Journalism Training
Free lessons in the craft: reporting, writing articles and polemics, images, data and statistics, digital safety, music, audio, video, ads and social media. Every lesson ends with something to do, most of it in the free Journal Tools, and a short quiz. Progress is kept in this browser only.
Start here
Writing Articles for Dummies: A Step-by-Step for the Unimaginative and Uneducated
A funny, patient, completely practical walk from blank page to a published 600 to 900 word news or opinion article. No talent required, just the willingness to follow ten steps in order.
- Before You Type a Single Word
- Finding Something Worth Writing About
- Gathering Stuff: Notes, Documents and Quotes
- The Lede, or How Not to Lose the Reader by Sentence Two
- The Middle Part Nobody Plans
- Quotes, Numbers and Other Things Beginners Mangle
- Write the Ugly First Draft Already
- Editing: Murdering Your Darlings
- Headlines, Photos and the Boring Stuff That Makes It Look Professional
- Hitting Publish Without Hitting a Lawsuit
Writing and reporting
Basic Journalism
Decide what is news, find the original record, request public documents under Idaho law, interview people fairly, check claims and images, and publish without stepping into defamation.
How to Write an Article
Turn a pile of notes into a finished article: find the point, write the lede, pick a structure, handle numbers and quotes honestly, edit your own copy, and ship it with citations, a glossary, reader Q&A and hard-question answers.
How to Write a Polemic
Write a hard-hitting argument against a public decision that rests on documents, answers the other side honestly and stays on the right side of defamation law.
Creating and Using Images in Articles
Pick and shoot images that carry real information, use other people's images legally, label AI art honestly, and publish pictures that are captioned, accessible and stripped of private metadata.
Data, privacy and safety
Data Journalism and Basic Statistics
Find public data, build and clean a spreadsheet from scratch, and do the handful of calculations that most local stories need. Then read uncertainty honestly, avoid the classic statistical traps, and publish charts and numbers a skeptic can check.
- Finding the Data Before You Need It
- Spreadsheets From Zero
- Pivot Tables: Answering Who, How Much and How Often
- Cleaning Data: The Unglamorous 80 Percent
- The Statistics That Matter in Local Stories
- Uncertainty: Samples, Margins of Error and Significance
- Correlation, Causation and the Traps Between Them
- Charts and Maps That Tell the Truth
- Checking Your Numbers and Writing Them Up
Digital Safety for Writers
Build a plain-language security plan, then lock down your accounts, devices, sources, files and website so one bad day does not end your reporting. Includes what to do, in order, if you get hacked or harassed.
- Threat Modeling in Plain Terms
- Passwords, Password Managers and Passkeys
- Two-Factor Authentication and SIM-Swap Protection
- Phishing and Social Engineering
- Device Security: Updates, Locks, Encryption and Travel
- Talking to Sources Safely
- Protecting Files: Backups, Encryption and Ransomware
- Doxxing and Online Harassment
- Securing Your Site and Recovering From a Hack
Music
Basic Music Theory
Learn the handful of theory ideas that folk, country and protest songwriters actually use: notes, keys, chords, number charts, rhythm and the capo. By the end you can read a chord chart, move a song to a new key and tell the band what you want.
Songwriting
Write folk, Americana, country and protest songs that hold together: a clear form, a title worth repeating, lines that sing naturally and verses that move a story. Then demo the song, clean it up and register it.
Audio
Sound Theory
A guided path through the SoundStudio audio theory tutorial, with the pieces it skips: how ears judge loudness, why 48 kHz, what LUFS targets mean, which frequencies do what, and how rooms and microphones get in the way. Every lesson ends with something to measure in SoundStudio.
Audio Editing and Production
Record a clean voice, then edit, clean, shape and mix it in SoundStudio, duck a music bed under it, repair clicks and pops, and deliver a file at the right loudness for a podcast, a stream or a broadcast spot.
Video and advertising
Video Production
Plan, shoot and edit a short news or explainer video with a phone and maybe a cheap mic, then caption it and export a file that plays right everywhere.
Video and Radio Ad Development
Write, cast, mix and deliver 15, 30 and 60 second video and radio spots that say one thing clearly, follow the disclosure rules for political and issue ads, and arrive at the station in the format it asked for.
Social media
Video and Reels for Social Media
Make short vertical videos that stop the scroll, read with the sound off, fit each platform's frame and length, and leave your computer as a clean file every app will accept.
Posts and Content for Social Media
Write posts that carry one point and the proof behind it, turn a single article into a week of material, keep a calendar you can actually stick to, handle comments without feeding trolls, and read your numbers for what they really say.
Capstone
Capstone: One Story, Every Format
Take one local story from a records request all the way to a news article, a polemic, an infographic, a radio spot, a reel and a week of posts. Then grade your own work with a checklist and a portfolio rubric.