Self-Guided Training, Part 1

In your second week at Patch, we offer several self-guided lessons from our News Academy training site. These are essential to learning how to cover a Patch territory and manage a collection of sites as a local editor. 

• Getting Started On A Local Beat: Patch's bread and butter is hyperlocal news. That is the news that matters most to our users. How do you develop key topics of interest to a community? How do you build sources? What tools will help you keep tabs on developments in town? Learn from Elizabeth Janney, who helped start Patch in 2010, about the essentials of community news reporting.
  video; estimated time: 1 hour

• Proofread Before You Post: An eagle-eyed editor offers helpful tips for proofreading your work before you publish. Please also read these tips for self-editing.
  video; estimated time: 45 minutes

• Headline Writing: Have you ever wanted to craft a unique headline for your email audience, and a different headline for your social media audience and yet a third version for search? You can do that in the Patch CMS. Best practices for each type of headline differ. To maximize your chances of gaining maximum audience on your articles, you need to become skilled at all three headline types.
  video; estimated time: 1 hour

• Programming Your Newsletters: The first step to building a strong newsletter is understanding who will be on the receiving end of that email the following morning.
  document; estimated time: 30 minutes

• Police General Practices: Patch adheres to several specific standards and practices when reporting police, crime and public safety news. Please read these guidelines and discuss with your team manager.
  documents; estimated time: 1 hour

  1. 1. Crime and Police Reporting Practices and Standards

     2. Police Booking Photo (aka Mugshot) Practices

• Questions? If you have questions about any of the material covered in these self-guided training modules, please reach out to one of the following individuals:

your manager

Autumn Johnson, Senior Managing Editor of Editorial Operations: autumn.johnson@patch.com

Renee Schiavone, Managing Editor: renee.schiavone@patch.com