Workshop: Writing for the Web with Jon Bernstein

Workshop Friday 21 April 2017, 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Standard £150
Freelance/Student £125
Members £100

Typewriter_crop
With more than 16 years’ experience in digital journalism, pioneering website editor Jon Bernstein will lead a day-long workshop on writing for the web. You will gain an understanding of the principles of writing for the web, how it differs from print, how to establish a successful blogging persona and why the headline must work much harder online.

In this interactive session, attendees will be given plenty of opportunities to hone their craft. The workshop is ideal for new and emerging journalists, established journalists making the transition from print to web and communications professionals seeking to extend the reach and impact of the written word.

The workshop will cover the following:

1. The principles of writing

  • Why writing for the web is exactly the same as writing for print. And why it’s completely different
  • What George Orwell can teach us about language and readability
  • EXERCISE #1: Simplifying language
  • EXERCISE #2: Decoding the press release
  • Understanding online reading habits
  • Six more tips for writing online

2. News writing and the fundamentals of storytelling

  • The Inverted Pyramid of news. And why it still matters
  • The Five Ws (and the H) of news
  • How to define an audience
  • Establishing length
  • Defining tone of voice
  • EXERCISE #3: Reworking the press release

3. Blogs, longer reads and structure

  • How to create a structure
  • How to plan
  • How to blog: the ‘atomised’ Inverted Pyramid
  • Three blogging archetypes that work
  • EXERCISE #4: Writing a blog post

4. Headlines

  • Why headlines matter more on the web
  • Tailoring headlines for the web
  • Newspaper headlines that probably don’t work online
  • Headlines that do work online
  • EXERCISE #5: Writing a killer online headline

5. SEO: an introduction

  • A practical guide to keyword research
  • . . . Final thoughts

JB_200x200About the trainer
Jon Bernstein is an award-winning journalist, editor and digital strategist. He was deputy editor, then digital director, at the New Statesman; multimedia editor at Channel 4 News; ran the Channel 4 FactCheck website during the 2005 general election; editor-in-chief of Directgov, working in the Cabinet Office’s eGovernment Unit; and editor-in-chief of dot com start up and technology website silicon.com. In 2011, he was named Website Editor of the Year by the British Society of Magazine Editors for Newstatesman.com.

Images via Shutterstock.com / a6photo and Jon Bernstein



Topics:
Past Workshops, , , , , , , , , , , ,