Poynter Announces McCormick Specialized Reporting Institute Lineup for 2015

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Feb. 12, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- To ensure that citizens benefit from the best reporting on key issues, The Poynter Institute today announced the 2015 McCormick Specialized Reporting Institutes. The subject-specific training workshops are designed to give journalists the knowledge, context and story ideas they need to cover critical topics in the news.

Made possible with funding provided by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, the seminars carry out the organizations' mission to create a strong democracy through an informed public.The McCormick Foundation pays travel costs and tuition for journalists through a $600,000, two-year grant to Poynter, a global leader in journalism.

The 2015 topics and workshop hosts are:

• Covering the U.S. Visa System in Your Own Back Yard, April 10-12 at Columbia College in Chicago, organized by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. For more details, click here.
• Keeping the Peace, Peacefully: Police-Community Relations, April 23-25 at Columbia College in Chicago, organized by the Community Media Workshop, details are available here.
• Covering the Iowa Caucuses, at Drake University, June 21-23, organized by The Poynter Institute. For more information, click here.
• Covering Education, this summer in Chicago, organized by The Poynter Institute.
• Covering Water in a Changing World, in October in Gainesville, Fla., organized by the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, details at www.jou.ufl.edu/water.

Poynter hosted the first SRI of 2015 at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on Jan. 21-22, which focused on covering Ebola and infectious disease.  More details and resources from that workshop can be found on Poynter's e-learning site, News University, at http://www.newsu.org/resources/sri/covering-infectious-disease.

To ensure as many people as possible benefit from this training, each host also will produce a Webinar on the topic and a page of reporting resources on Poynter's NewsU (www.NewsU.org).

"The Robert R. McCormick Foundation is pleased to continue its partnership with The Poynter Institute in providing high quality training for journalists on relevant issues," said Jennifer Choi, program officer for the Democracy Program at the McCormick Foundation. "We appreciate that despite the pressures newsrooms face to afford any reporter time away from daily operations, reporters continue to prioritize the opportunity to experience a Specialized Reporting Institute because of the reputation of the trainings and their own commitment to communities to cover the issues well."

Reporters interested in applying should contact workshop hosts. Application details will be available approximately three months before each workshop.

The McCormick Foundation has partnered with The Poynter Institute to offer this program since 2011. This is the second year of a two-year grant to continue this work.

"These Specialized Reporting Institutes are truly special, giving journalists in-depth expertise and perspective on some of the biggest and most timely issues our nation is facing," said Poynter president Tim Franklin. "These institutes help journalists do their jobs better, and that eventually benefits citizens in our self-governed democracy. I'm grateful to the McCormick Foundation for its support."

Previous McCormick Specialized Reporting Institutes have informed journalists' work on covering guns, sex trafficking, immigration reform, suicide and mental health, Common Core, the Affordable Care Act and more. To see tip sheets, slide presentations, links to Webinars and other reporting resources from prior McCormick SRIs, visit  www.newsu.org/resources/mccormick-sri/all.

The Robert R. McCormick Foundation developed the SRI program in 2007 to provide journalists and others with subject-specific expertise and practical reporting training on key issues. The training convenes a diverse group of journalists, often from small to mid-sized news organizations, plus educators for a program lasting two to three days. Participants represent all media platforms.

About the Robert R. McCormick Foundation
The Robert R. McCormick Foundation is committed to fostering communities of educated, informed and engaged citizens. Through philanthropic programs, Cantigny Park and museums, the Foundation helps develop citizen leaders and works to make life better in our communities. The Foundation was established as a charitable trust in 1955, upon the death of Colonel Robert R. McCormick, the longtime editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune. The Robert R. McCormick Foundation is one of the nation's largest foundations, with more than $1 billion in assets. For more information, please visit www.McCormickFoundation.org.

About the Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is 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 300,000 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.

Contact:
Wendy Wallace
[email protected]
727-553-4311
Poynter

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