TAB Launches Seven-Part Newsroom Training Program

posted on 10.17.2022

- Register Now for Virtual Offerings Starting Oct. 26

TAB opened registration this week for a multipart newsroom webinar series featuring topics addressing journalist skills, newsroom management and journalists’ well-being.

TAB member station news directors and general managers should check their inboxes for the registration email featuring the signup links.

The series starts Oct. 26 and features two nationally known newsroom trainers, Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute and Kevin Benz of KevinBenzNews.com 

TAB is offering the hour-long sessions to newsrooms for free thanks to stations’ continued support of TAB’s Public Education Partnership Program (PEP) which generates funding for many of TAB’s member services.

Each session starts at 11 AM CT and lasts an hour.

TAB has budgeted time for attendee questions during and at the end of each session.

The webinars will be recorded and made available for later viewing. 

Kevin Benz Sessions

Benz, a veteran of several Texas newsrooms and former RTDNA chairman will present three sessions in the series.

Making the Right Call: The Principles of Journalism and How to Use Them
This Oct. 26 interactive session will use real examples and exercises to get attendees thinking and reflecting more deeply about how they ethically gather and disseminate news using four solid principles of journalism.

Covering Polarized Issues, Knowing Your Story: Abortion, Immigration, Guns
This Nov. 2 session explores how to break down some of the most polarizing stories of the day and truly educate and inform audiences.

Covering More... With Less… Smarter
This Nov. 30 session targets newsroom managers and looks pragmatically at how to deal with the reality of smaller staffing and fewer resources. It will explore how to do more, with less, by fundamentally changing how news is gathered and how newsrooms have traditionally been structured.

Al Tompkins Sessions

Tompkins, a favorite trainer amongst Texas newsrooms, will present four sessions focusing on journalism skills and newsroom management.

Fighting Fakes and Truth Decay
This Nov. 15 session explores how fakers fake and how journalists can protect themselves against getting suckered in by false claims, doctored photos, tampered tweets and studies and polls that don’t hold water.  

Managing Newsroom Stress and Trauma
The stress and trauma affecting today’s journalists comes from all corners and it is taking a heavy toll on newsroom staff. In this Dec. 6 session, the husband-wife team of Al Tompkins and Sidney Tompkins, a licensed psychotherapist, will talk about self-care for journalists. Learn how to cope with journalist stress and trauma.

Keeping the Keepers
This Dec. 8 session is for newsroom managers who are desperate to retain employees at a time when newsrooms are desperate to hire employees because of an extraordinary turnover rate in the last two years. 

In this session, newsroom managers will learn:

• the key motivators for why people stay in a job and why they leave
• new research on key life-events that often lead to an employee deciding to leave their job
• how different generations of employees have different reasons for staying or leaving a job
• the one thing that 52% of people who left their job last year said might have convinced them to stay (it was not money)

Interviewing Essentials
In this Dec. 13 session, Tompkins will explore the core of all journalism - interviewing and listening. Journalists will learn the best tools and techniques to garner memorable soundbites for storytelling.

• how “where” you talk with people can be nearly as important as what you ask them
• how to avoid a “double barrel” question that usually produces a useless answer
• how some questions produce facts while others produce memorable soundbites
• deconstruct an interview question by question to examine what works and why
• ways to talk respectfully with vulnerable people including children, crime victims and people who experienced tragedy

 Questions? Contact TAB’s Michael Schneider or call (512) 322-9944.

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