Google News Initiative announces new courses to help newsrooms innovate

The Google News Initiative India Training Network and Google News Lab helped train journalists across the country since 2018. Now, new courses have been added to their tools.

Google has added new courses to the Google News Initiative India Training Network and is also conducting webinars.  (Pixabay)

The Google News Initiative India Training Network, launched in 2018, together with the Google News Lab has been training journalists across India to use free digital tools to help improve the quality of journalism.

These tools include skills to effectively use Google search operators, use of report-friendly tools like site archiving and audio transcription, use of web monitoring via Google Trends and Google Alerts and also tips on how to verify the content that is posted through reverse visual searches and geolocating images.

In a blog post today, Google has added some new courses to the Google News Initiative training repertoire which include the following:

Data GIF Maker, Flourish, Sheets, Earth, Maps and Timelapse

This comes under data journalism and visualisation and the course will help journalists find and visualise data easily without having knowledge of graphic designing or coding. By accessing open data and free tools, you can learn how to collate information that can be turned into simple graphs, charts or marker maps and also visual projects on Google Earth and Earth Studio.

Google Search Operators, Trends, Alerts, Website Analysis

This series, that comes under Fundamentals, will help equip you with the basic tools to work more efficiently. From optimising Google Drive to search operators, this course should provide journalists and editors handy free tools that can help drive deeper reporting.

Reverse Visual Search, Factcheck Explorer, Geolocation, Earth, Street View

When it comes to digital verification, one of the biggest challenges facing news organisations today is distinguishing what is real from what isn't. From identifying altered imagery, manipulated video etc, this session should help you learn how to identify a range of misinformation, disinformation etc that are so often circulated.

Podcasting, Pinpoint, Environmental journalism tools, digital security, mobile journalism

Besides these, there are some special courses that take beginners through the basics of podcasting, mobile journalism, investigative and environmental journalism, easy ways to safeguard your devices and accounts and also how to protect yourself as a journalist. You upload and collaborate for reporting projects on Pinpoint as well.

Google is also organising some webinars on data journalism and visualisation that kicks off from March 1 (today). Newsrooms can register here.