Dates: 14-15 May 2011
Duration: Two days, 10am to 5pm
Location: Kings Place, London
Price: £500 (inclusive of VAT)
Maximum number of places available: 30
The digital era has transformed investigative journalism. As information has become more easily accessible, holding the powerful to account is no longer a task restricted to reporters in newsrooms. A generation of 'citizen journalists' is now breaking major scoops across the globe, many equipped with no more than a laptop and a nose for a story.
In this intensive, weekend course, two of the UK's leading investigative journalists will give students the skills needed to reach the next step. In a programme that will benefit working journalists looking to sharpen their tools as well as curious amateurs, lawyers, regulators, press officers and campaigners, Paul Lewis and Heather Brooke will teach the secrets of their trade in a series of interactive workshops and skill-based sessions.
With an emphasis on the practical, students will learn about the options available to them when trying to discover what corporations, governments and elites would prefer them not to know.
The weekend includes the staples of investigative journalism: deciphering company accounts; locating people; cultivating sources; cutting through spin; and convincing people to talk. There will be in-depth workshops on how to use the Freedom of Information Act and lesser-known legislation to unlock bureaucracies, alongside advice on how to mount a successful campaign and bring about change.
Whether it is simple advice on data journalism, or an insider-guide to using social media and crowd sourcing, the course will reveal how new technology and recent innovations have revolutionised investigative journalism.
Paul Lewis
The Guardian's special projects editor, Paul Lewis is the award-winning journalist behind recent scoops revealing the life of undercover police officer Mark Kennedy and the death of newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson. Currently heading a unit tasked with finding innovative ways of using social media and crowd-sourcing, Lewis joined the newspaper five years ago, quickly establishing himself as one of Fleet Street's most tenacious reporters. Recent awards include the Bevins prize for investigative journalism and the prestigious title of reporter of the year, which he won at the British Press Awards 2010.
Heather Brooke
Heather Brooke is an award-winning writer, journalist and activist. Her unprecedented five-year campaign for the full disclosure of MPs' expenses led to full-scale reform of the parliamentary expense system and her story was made into a BBC drama called On Expenses. She is a visiting professor at City University's department of journalism and has written for all the main national newspapers as well presenting and consulting for Channel 4's Dispatches. She is the author of Your Right to Know (Pluto Press) and The Silent State (Heinemann). She is currently working on her latest book, The Revolution will be Digitised, which focuses on the ways the internet is transforming society. As a result of this research she was able to obtain a leak out of Wikileaks for the full batch of 251,287 US diplomatic cables.
Book online now! Click here.
Or email Patrick Keogh on masterclasses@guardian.co.uk or telephone
+44 (0) 20-3353 2612
Alternatively, write to:
Patrick Keogh
Guardian Masterclasses
Guardian News and Media
Kings Place
90 York Way
London N1
