YDR Insider

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YDR welcomes a new class of journalists, leaders

YDRU class of 2014, from left: Hafiz Rashid, breaking news web producer; Chad Houck,  copy editor/design center; Flint McColgan, county government/politics reporter; Gary Haber, business reporter; Gordon Rago, night police reporter; Brett Sholtis, business reporter; Teddy Feinberg, assistant sports editor; Abigail Geiger, breaking news web producer; Chris Beck, assistant editor/design center; Anthony Machcinski, breaking news web producer.
YDRU class of 2014, from left: Hafiz Rashid, breaking news web producer; Chad Houck, copy editor/design center; Flint McColgan, county government/politics reporter; Gary Haber, business reporter; Gordon Rago, night police reporter; Brett Sholtis, business reporter; Teddy Feinberg, assistant sports editor; Abigail Geiger, breaking news web producer; Chris Beck, assistant editor/design center; Anthony Machcinski, breaking news web producer. (Photo: Paul Kuehnel, Daily Record/Sunday News)

There’s a lot of talk these days about journalism training, and how some journalists say they’re not getting enough.

We’re trying to make sure that’s not the case here.

A group of our newest employees just finished YDRU, a big-picture course on the YDR’s history and culture that serves to welcome new staffers, teach them, and motivate them to do great journalism and become leaders in our newsroom. They participated in six one-hour sessions led by editors on topics such as the digital journalist, YDR core values, and ethics.

We’ve put on YDRU for years. But before that, this group attended a new training session, something we’re calling “Baseline skills” (perhaps for lack of a more elegant name). That session featured a day of 45-minute to one-hour sessions that covered the basic skills every new staffer needs to have to hit the ground running — from our content-management system to how to put up a photo assignment to doing police checks to covering stories of trauma and conflict to best practices on social media.

The new staffers have given us some great feedback on both sessions, and one message that was particularly great to hear:

Keep the training coming, they said.

We’ll do our best.