Get Help: Coaching for Journalists and Newsrooms
Once the learn it, they'll make it their own
Rob Golub offers these services and more. This is a guide and it can be tailored to your needs.
Rob is a former chief editor at a daily newspaper, a national journalism speaker and trainer, and the founder of Successful Journalism for Communities. He worked with Northwestern University’s Readership Institute early in his career, setting him on the path to emotional engagement of journalism audiences. Perhaps most important, he runs a successful news product that serves its audience, earns audience loyalty, and sees readership and passalong at unusually high rates.
Speeches and Workshops for Staff and Editors
“Earn the trust and loyalty of your local audience – and fight for journalism”
60 minutes, digital slides, speech with Q&A
This session represents the core of our work. Journalists are taught to make story choices that produce emotionally engaged journalism. We will learn how we can serve our community, not just cover it. Journalists will learn best practices grounded in a strong sense of ethics, lived experience, research and enthusiasm for journalism. An emotionally engaged journalism audience will trust your journalists and the news they produce, engage with your news products, and, ultimately, bolster revenue and the fight for great journalism. Most important, your journalists will leave this session excited to try out new skills, and your editors will feel fully respected and supported. We want to hear what your challenges are and what is working for you.
Optional Part 2 Workshop: “Develop story pitches to serve a journalism audience.” 60 minutes, digital slides, speech with Q&A. In this part-two session, we do a review, show more samples of how to apply the principles, and provide the chance for journalists to pitch emotionally engaged stories. Journalists develop and test their own ideas for serving their community, not just covering it. This encouraging session gives journalists a sense of ownership of emotionally engaged journalism.
“Story focus is our superpower – the best writing tips for professional journalists”
60 minutes, digital slides, speech with Q&A
Even deeply experienced journalists can sometimes forget the importance of story focus. We’ll talk about nut grafs and how we can best build stories around them, to communicate clearly, serve readers, impress editors, and make a real difference. In this interactive workshop, nationally recognized journalism trainer Rob Golub shares practical techniques that have helped journalists now at organizations ranging from community newsrooms to The New York Times. Story tips include using specifics to draw readers into your work, with examples drawn from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism. Participants leave with new arrows in their quiver and a renewed excitement for writing great journalism.
Help for Editors and Publishers
Emotional engagement product review
This is not a session but a review of your news service’s story and angle choices. Is your news product emotionally engaging your journalism audience? What can be improved? You’ll get a rubric-based written report, with discussion and a proposed action plan for improvement as needed. An emotional engagement product review can be repeated, to provide measurable data on newsroom improvement.
A combined approach: The 90-day Emotional Engagement Newsroom Bootcamp
It’s not easy to shift the culture of a newsroom from covering the news to serving the community. This 90-day bootcamp is designed as a resource for your newsroom leaders, to help them make that shift in their own way, for their culture. This experience brings all of the above together into a structured product that produces measurable improvement:
- Open with an emotional engagement product review, to set a benchmark.
- 1-2 private sessions of our trust and loyalty speech and/or workshop – for newsroom leadership, to build initial buy-in.
- 1-2 sessions of our trust and loyalty speech and/or workshop – for the larger newsroom audience.
- Session on story focus and writing tips
- Twice-monthly emotional engagement product reviews and discussion with newsroom leadership, for encouragement, guidance and measurable results.
- General availability for brief questions and concerns from newsroom leadership.
- Final emotional engagement product review, with a report on measurable improvement.
Rob Golub
Founder & Editor
Successful Journalism for Communities
Rob@SuccessfulJournalism.com
Serve your community. Earn their trust.