Interested in Galah's "On Being a Journalist" course?

We're taking expressions of interest for our pilot "On Being a Journalist" program.

The course will be taught live, online, over eight weeks in a small and intimate group. Each student will receive personal feedback from a Galah editor.

Based on our survey feedback, we’ve tried to keep the cost of the course as low as we can to encourage as many young writers to apply as possible. We’ve received funding from the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, Agri Futures and a personal donation from Tory Maguire, who is managing director of publishing at Nine, to help us keep the cost of the course low to encourage as many young writers to apply as possible.

Here is the proposed course structure, but we want to hear from you before we lock in the program so that we can build the course you want and need.

Reporting

• What makes a story interesting?
• How to find a story.
• Planning a story.
• What a story needs in order to work.
• Interviewing techniques.
• Fact checking, attribution, bias and objectivity.
• Dealing with sources.

Writing

• How to craft compelling sentences (such as by using the active voice).
• Using the right tone of voice and style.
• Writing strong intros.
• Showing, not telling,
• Putting the reader first.
• How to structure different kinds of stories. 

Editing

• Tightening and cutting copy.
• Writing headlines that work across print and online.
• Spotting common grammatical mistakes.
• Using punctuation marks, including apostrophes, commas, hyphens, dashes, semicolons and more.
• Proofreading. 

The business of being a writer 

• Finding work.
• How to pitch to publications. 
• Word rates – what to expect. 
• Ethics, copyright and defamation.
• How to self-publish (with a focus on newsletters).

Please register your interest in the course below. We've got a couple of questions to help us make the course as useful as possible and we'll be in touch with more details when we're closer to launching the course.

Course sponsors

Thanks to the generosity of the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, Agri Futures and a personal donation from Tory Maguire, who is managing director of publishing at Nine, to help us keep the cost of the course low to encourage as many young writers to apply as possible.

AgriFutures

AgriFutures Australia is one of 15 Research and Development Corporations (RDCs) that service the Research, Development and Extension (RD&E) needs of Australian rural industries, delivering research and innovation that aims to give our farmers and producers real returns, as well as prepare them to thrive into the future.

Over the past 21 years, AgriFutures has organised the Rural Women's Award - Australia’s leading award empowering and celebrating the inclusive and courageous leadership of women involved in Australia’s rural and emerging industries, businesses and communities, now and into the future.

Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation

VFFF is a thriving family foundation, with family members spanning three generations active in its current work. Founded in 1962, VFFF has distributed more than $200 million to Australian communities. Under VFFF's current grant-making strategy of Backing Young People, it supports individuals and organisations that provide opportunities for young people to access decent work, to care for the environment, and contribute to society. It aims that 60% of its funds support rural and regional young people.