Beyond the Inverted Pyramid

Beyond the Inverted Pyramid

Assistant professor Andy Bechtel is the author of a new online course about alternative story forms for News University, a project of The Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

"Beyond the Inverted Pyramid: Creating Alternative Story Forms," which launched in late June, teaches the tools needed to create effective alternative story forms such as timelines, checklists and other formats. Students learn to break down information by theme and organize stories to make them snappy and more useful to time-crunched readers.

With a focus on the importance of newsroom collaboration, the course showcases a range of supplemental and standalone forms, demonstrates what forms work best with what story ideas and provides techniques for editing alternative forms for factual errors and other problematic copy.

“Beyond the Inverted Pyramid,” which has ranked at or near the top of NewsU’s list of “hot courses” since its debut, takes about two hours to complete. Students can access the course on their schedules, starting and stopping as needed, and returning anytime after enrolling. The course can be used as a primer, refresher or continual reference. It is free to registered users of NewsU.

News University is an online journalism training program that provides interactive courses that appeal to journalists at all levels of experience and in all types of media. NewsU’s more than 60 courses cover writing and reporting techniques, visual journalism, multimedia storytelling, ethics, values and skills for newsroom leaders.

Most NewsU courses are free. NewsU is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Bechtel teaches editing and writing at the School, and he blogs about those topics at editdesk.blogspot.com.

Visit www.newsu.org/asfs for more information about "Beyond the Inverted Pyramid: Creating Alternative Story Forms."