Facebook launch e-learning course for journalists

In news that is sure to make The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katherine Viner’s blood boil, Facebook has recently launched a new e-learning course designed to help journalists make better use of the Facebook platform.

The resources currently available online cover items like clickbait headlines and why you should not use them, building an audience via social media and how to discover news content via Facebook (because that’s where most journalists find their news now – sad isn’t it?).

At present, current available course materials shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to complete.

Aine Kerr, manager of journalism partnerships at Facebook, told journalists: “Next to Facebook guidelines and instructions, we’re also taking great examples from the industry itself.

“Our hope is that this will be very informative for newsrooms but equally it will be very much a collaborative, inspiring experience for journalists to learn from how other journalists have been doing it in their newsrooms according to their particular beats and specialisms.”

In the coming week’s Facebook will be extending the range of editorial content available via the e-Learning platform as well as launching a series of webinars.

It’s first webinar which will be held on November 3, 2016 will focus on how journalists can best use Facebook’s new video broadcast tool Facebook Live.

According to the website Journalism.co.uk, Facebook’s journalism training services were developed following conversations between the Facebook News Partnership team and several media organisations and the team will continue to update the training based on feedback to reflect new product launches or skills needed.

As social media platforms like Facebook continue to disrupt the way we as PR professionals distribute our content, social media savvy PRs should probably look to invest 15 minutes or so in Facebook’s new educational resource.

Journalists might have a whole host of new social media tools to engage their audiences – but they do not have the monopoly over the use of these technologies.