First lesson with Chris Wheal at the London School of Journalism

Award-winning (that's getting serious) freelance journalist Chris Wheal.

An insight into my first lesson with award-winning freelance journalist Chris Wheal at the London School of Journalism. 

Publishing articles online is one thing, but doing it the right way is a whole different story.

It is precisely that story that Chris Wheal taught us at the London School of Journalism on our 3rd week of training.

I guess the basics of the class could be summed up into three key points:

• search engine

• social media

• appealing content

Who would read an article that sounds like Wikipedia? No-one, according to Chris Wheal. 

Nor would anyone read a news story that drags on for too long and doesn't get to the point. 

"People scan through the news", he said, giving us various examples on how to do things right. 

• Making the content sharp and easy to understand. 
• Getting to the main point of the story at the beginning to grab the reader's attention.
• Personalizing articles with "you" and "we" to engage the reader. 
• Giving concrete examples as well as putting things in context, especially money, not to confuse the reader.
• Breaking up the story with subheadings, pictures or both.

An article has to be built to be found easily on search engines. 

Well, that's good news, because Chris Wheal has some words of advice on this too. 

"Search engines, or spiders, keep an index of linked pages and that list is updated every couple days". Referencing an article is the way to end up on that list, by following these methods: 

• Putting as many links, hashtags and google adwords in the story.
• Using key words and hyperlinks that people might type on search engines to get to the story. 
• Quoting nouns as early as possible and giving as many details as possible straight at the beginning.
• Keeping in mind that only 60 characters will appear on Google or any other web browser, those characters have to be impactful. 

Finally, social media are an indispensable companion for any wanna-be journalist.

A journalist's best friends.

It is a sad truth for someone as unwilling to use them as me, but Chris Wheal made his point very clear. 

"Journalists have to make themselves available on social media", he said, before stressing how useful those platforms could be: 

• Many journalists use social media to get their stories and find their sources more easily. 
• Trending stories on Twitter or Facebook are the kind of stories people want to read about and therefore the kind of news relevant to a journalist.
• There are as many platforms as there are ways to use them: Twitter helps in finding stories and sources immediately, Audioboomer allows radio broadcasters to record their work on the spot, Periscope can be used to live-stream any event,What's App is widely preferred to communicate with a source because it keeps track of their phone number, Linked In is the most successful work-related platform on the market etc.