checklists

1. Am I doing my job inclusively?

Information we work with is influenced in many ways – both, when received as well as when reproduced to our audience. It is not an easy job to minimise these effects, keeping the story and message inclusive might help.

Do I understand how does my own background affect how I report on stories?

When and how do I use words (and their modifications) like ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘they’, ‘them’, etc? How do I represent people I write about?

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2. Critical analysing of information

This checklist could help you to identify narratives, discourses and frames journalists (usually) unconsciously use while doing a journalism job. Do not take it as a manual or exhausting list of to do and not to dos - it is more about food for thoughts when gathering, selecting, processing and reproducing whatever information we get into contact with.

3. Going to the field

What to have in mind before departure on the ground? Especially distanced contexts. What not to forget?

4. Making entry into a community

This checklist is based on Reporting Diversity Manual – it could help you to make contact with members of minority community, but can be used for other social groups as well.

5. Changing your approach to desk-based research – first steps.

Would you like to enrich your desk-based coverage on global issues? There are a few simple steps you can take to begin with.

6. Collecting findings: tips and suggestions.

Nowadays, journalists have a universe of new technologies to communicate across the world – reliably, instantly and for free (or almost). This is the ‘new normal’ for news coverage and journalists have to adapt to make the most of these new opportunities. This checklist might help you with fulfilling this aspiration.

7. Planning is the essence of good coverage.

Irrespective of whether you are working from behind a desk or in the field, solid research and planning is where good journalism begins. This is especially true if you don't really know a lot about the topic. The following checklist is based on recommendations in a textbook on migration reporting, People Between the Lines: A Handbook on Migration for (Future) Journalists.

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