National Geographic Society and Poynter Expand Training Partnership

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., June 4, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- National Geographic has agreed to a partnership with The Poynter Institute, which will provide training for members of the magazine's leadership team and on instruction on digital storytelling skills for its staff.

The partnership builds on previous successful training projects Poynter has led with the magazine, which included storytelling and social media workshops held with National Geographic's editorial staff and Fulbright Storytelling Fellows in 2014.

The new training kicked off with interactive, in-person workshops at National Geographic's headquarters in Washington D.C. last week led by Poynter faculty. This will be followed by additional in-person training there in June focused on honing digital storytelling skills for National Geographic's Fulbright Fellows.

"This growing partnership with an iconic publisher like National Geographic is a great example how Poynter's targeted training can meet an organization's strategic editorial and leadership goals," said Poynter President Tim Franklin.

"We're excited to be working with Poynter to deepen our leadership bench, and to help us tell stories in cutting-edge ways across platforms," said National Geographic Editor in Chief Susan Goldberg. 

The expansion of this partnership is the most recent in a series of training alliances Poynter has forged with major media companies. Those include partnerships with the Gannett Co., Journal Media Group (formerly the E.W. Scripps Newspapers), the McClatchy Co., The Associated Press and Pioneer News Group.

In addition to those comprehensive partnerships, Poynter also has done training in recent months for NBC News, the CBS Local Stations Group, Schurz Communications, API, the World Bank, The United Nations and the U.S. State Department.

Last year, Poynter provided training for about 100,000 journalists and educators from 91 countries. It conducted training programs in 28 states and the District of Columbia. Poynter's popular media site, Poynter.org, attracts more than 5 million unique visitors annually. 

About The Poynter Institute The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a global leader in journalism education, and a strategy center that stands for uncompromising excellence in journalism, media and 21st century public discourse. Poynter faculty teach seminars and workshops at the Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., and at conferences and organizational sites around the world. Its e-learning division, News University, www.newsu.org, offers the world's largest online journalism curriculum in 7 languages, with more than 400 interactive courses and 325,000 registered users in more than 200 countries. The Institute's website, www.poynter.org, produces 24-hour coverage of news about media, ethics, technology, the business of news and the trends that currently define and redefine journalism news reporting. The world's top journalists and media innovators come to Poynter to learn and teach new generations of reporters, storytellers, media inventors, designers, visual journalists, documentarians and broadcast producers, and to build public awareness about journalism, media, the First Amendment and protected discourse that serves democracy and the public good.

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SOURCE The Poynter Institute