This self-directed course features content from the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas' massive open online course (MOOC) titled “Explain this! How explanatory journalism informs and engages audiences.” This four-week course was taught by John O'Neil and took place from January 16 - February 12, 2023.
The course materials are broken into four modules, along with an introductory module:
We encourage you to watch the videos and review the readings. The course materials build off each other, but the videos and readings also act as standalone resources that you can return to over time.
We hope you enjoy the materials. If you have any questions, please contact us at journalismcourses@austin.utexas.edu.
John O’Neil is an editor with Bloomberg News in New York City. He joined Bloomberg in 2013 to help develop new formats for explanatory news there and has been a member of the QuickTake team ever since. QuickTakes draws on the expertise of Bloomberg’s 2,700 member newsroom to produce readable, authoritative pages offering background and context on topics ranging from volatility in global bond markets to Xi Jinping’s rise to power and debates over the regulation of cryptocurrencies. In addition to appearing on the Bloomberg Terminal and Bloomberg.com, QuickTakes are syndicated worldwide, are collected into print editions twice a year and are the basis for many Bloomberg News videos.
Before joining Bloomberg, John spent 24 years at The New York Times, where he was an editor on the metro, Washington, special sections and news desks before leading the development of Times Topics pages into an online current events encyclopedia. In addition to editing, he wrote over 800 bylined articles for the Times, primarily on health, science and education.
In 2004, his first-person essay about his son’s autism was the capstone of a series the paper nominated for a Pulitzer prize in explanatory journalism. In 2009, an album of original songs about autism for which he wrote the lyrics was released featuring performances by Jackson Browne, Dar Williams and Teddy Geiger, among others.
John graduated from Yale University with a degree in history in 1979; his first reporting was done for the Associated Press in Nigeria and Ghana. He lives in Brooklyn with his dog, Pablo, and has three sons, who live in Jersey City, Western Massachusetts and Washington, DC. He is currently working on a graphic novel about Niccolo Machiavelli.
In the introductory module, you will get an overview of the course structure. After watching the welcome video, please explore the rest of the introductory materials, including the syllabus and recommended readings.
This module will cover:
Guest speakers:
Introduction
1. Welcome video
2. Course syllabus
3. Interview with Margaret Sullivan
4. Interview with John Wihbey
Readings
1. Why being a journalist is like life with a toddler – thoughts and definitions for explanatory journalism, by John O’Neil [John O'Neil, Bloomberg News]
2. Biden Signs Legislation to Avert Rail Shutdown [Claire Foran, cnn.com]
3. How an Arcane 96-Year-Old Law Stopped the Rail Strike[Chris Isidore, CNN Business]
4. The Freight Rail Labor Dispute Was Never About Sick Days [Aaron Gordon, Vice.com]
5. Hell and High Water” (text version) [Neena Satija, Kiah Collier, Al Shaw and Jeff Larson, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica]
Readers today have access to more news and information than ever before. But with that torrent of content comes new challenges for readers in understanding the news – and for journalists, an ever-greater emphasis on making the news understandable. Explanatory journalism comes in a wide range of forms and formats, from brief asides in breaking news stories to multi-part standalone enterprise series, and in podcasts, videos and graphic presentations, as well as stories. Here we’ll start to look at what readers need and the tools you can employ for meeting them.
This module will cover:
Guest speakers
Video Classes
1. What needs explaining? What are our tools?
Watch Video Presentation Transcripts
2. Key terms and formats
Watch Video Presentation Transcripts
2. Interview with S. Mitra Kalita
3. Interview with Juliana Barbassa
Readings
1. The Audience in the Mind’s Eye: How Journalists Imagine Their Readers [James G. Robinson, Columbia Journalism Review]
2. Characteristics of Effective Accountability Journalists [Jane Elizabeth, American Press Institute]
3. ANC Kicks Can Down the Road on Integrity Commission’s Report on Phala Phala [Juniour Khumalo, News24.com]
4. The Phala Phala farmgate scandal hanging over South Africa's Ramaphosa [Wendell Roelf, Reuters]
5. What is Germany's 'Reichsbürger' movement? [Rina Goldenberg, DW.com (in English)]
6. Germany Far-Right Groups Becoming Increasingly Organized, a Historian Says [Mallory Yu, NPR]
Optional Resources
1. How to Get Published [Kate Dwyer, The New York Times] (Free registration may be required)
2. Childbirth in Venezuela, Where Women’s Deaths Can Be a State Secret [Julie Turkewitz and Isayen Herrara, The New York Times] (Free registration may be required)
3. Why Do You Hate Me? A Brown Woman Talks to a Former White Nationalist [S. Mitra Kalita, CNN.com]
4. What We Learned Registering Thousands of Our Neighbors for Vaccines [Mitra Kalita, Epicenter-nyc.org]
5. Cold Opening – Whitewater Explained [Saturday Night Live cast]
6. Whitewater Investigation’s Focus: Another Tangled Arkansas Deal [Michael Wines, The New York Times] (Free registration may be required)
The basic unit of journalism is still the news article. Here’s where we’ll talk about figuring out which elements of a news story need explanation and which don’t, and what needs a lot of clarification or just a little. We’ll look at ways of crafting brief explanatory asides and at how to weave bigger explanatory chunks into a piece without bogging it down, as well as where to find the information you need on deadline.
This module will cover:
Guest speakers
Video Classes
1. Yes, it's a news story but you can still help your readers!
Watch Video Presentation Transcripts
2. The hard part: How to explain a story's 'nub'
Watch Video Presentation Transcripts
3. Interview with Kelsey Butler
4. Interview with Lisa Beyer
5. Interview with Kenneth Chang
Readings
1. Does Explanatory Journalism Exist on Deadline? [John O'Neil, Bloomberg News]
2. A Booming Corner of Private Credit Has Some Investors on Edge [Kelsey Butler, Bloomberg News]
3. Affirmative Action’s End Will Crush the Diversity Talent Pipeline [Kelsey Butler, Bloomberg News]
4. The Price of Honor [Lisa Beyer, Time Magazine]
5. Arrested Development [Lisa Beyer, Time Magazine]
Optional Resources
1. Calypso LBO Loan Is Latest Giant Deal in Private Debt [Kelsey Butler, Bloomberg News]
2. Mexico’s Covid Response Led to the Death of 2,240 New Mothers [Kelsey Butler, Bloomberg News]
3. Scientists Achieve Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough With Blast of 192 Lasers [Kenneth Chang, The New York Times]
A lot of topics are hard to explain fully within a breaking news story. Here’s where we’ll look at the range of tools and formats at your disposal. We’ll talk about explaining a specific aspect of the news in depth or putting the news in a broader context, how to gather the material you need, create a structure that’s easy for readers to follow – and avoid “hand waving.” Explainers can and should convey a range of points of view, and can be an important tool in fighting misinformation. Done right, explainers can also be reusable – what can be called persistent content – and can save you and your colleagues work in the future.
This module will cover:
Guest speakers
Video Classes
1. How (and why) to do standalone explainers
Watch Video Presentation Transcripts
2. Getting the most out of your standalone pieces
Watch Video Presentation Transcripts
3. Interview with Mary Childs
4. Interview with Lisa Beyer
Readings
1. Community Q&A: As a white manager, how do I build trust and be a good ally to my colleagues of color? [Members of the DEI Coalition, Source]
2. Let’s Talk: Personal Boundaries, Safety & Women on Journalism [Ariel Ritchen, The Dart Center]
3. Supporting our colleagues: A guide for journalists and media professionalsk [Headlines Networ]
4. Changing Company Culture Requires a Movement, Not a Mandate [Bryan Walker and Sarah A. Soule, Harvard Business Review]
5. Distressed Retailers Scour Loan FIne Print for Debt Tactics [Jodi Xu Klein, Bloomberg News]
6. In Finance, ‘J. Crew’ Is a Verb. It Means to Stick It to a Lender [Peter Coy, Businessweek]
4. J. Screwed [Amanda Aronczyk and Mary Childs, Planet Money (transcript)]
7. The Arc of the Covenant [Mary Childs, in Off the Run/substack]
8. What’s Wrong? [planetmoney, TikTok]
9. What the End Game for Crypto Will Look Like [Edward Harrison, Bloomberg News]
11. Why Tether and Stablecoin USDT Have Become a Big Crypto Worry [Emily Nicolle, Bloomberg News]
Optional Resources
1. Who gets to keep burning fossil fuels as the planet heats up? [Umair Irfan, Vox]
2. Why Inflation Heats Up and Is So Hard to Cool Down [Katia Demetrieva, Bloomberg News]
Not everything is a sidebar! Explanatory articles or series can stand on their own -- and can have tremendous impact. We’ll talk about how sometimes the most powerful pieces are those that convey to a broad audience the things that “everybody” knows – everybody who’s up to their ears in the subject, that is. Here’s where we’ll talk about narrative techniques and incorporating data and graphics. We’ll also discuss how social media can be used both as a reporting tool and to promote finished work to a broad readership.
This module will cover:
Guest speakers
Video Classes
1. Enterprise Explanatory Journalism
2. Course Overview and Final Thoughts
3. Interview with Zach Mider
4. Interview with Thomas Lin
Readings
1. 2°C: Beyond the Limit [The staff of The Washington Post]
2.US Firms With Irish Addresses Get Breaks Derided as ‘Blarney’ [Zachary R. Mider, Bloomberg News]
3. QuickTake: Tax Inversion [Zachary R. Mider, Bloomberg News]
4. The Webb Space Telescope Will Rewrite Cosmic History. If It Works. [Natalie Wolchover, Quanta Magazine]
5. US Firms With Irish Addresses Get Breaks Derided as ‘Blarney’ [Zachary R. Mider, Bloomberg News]
6. The Pickleball Craze, Explained [Vox]
Optional Resources
1. Unpatriotic Loophole’ Targeted by Obama Costs $2 Billion [Zachary R. Mider, Bloomberg News]
2. The Greatest Tax Story Ever Told [Zachary R. Mider, Bloomberg News]
3. Slow Motion Miracle: One Boy’s Journey Out of Autism’s Grasp [John O’Neil, The New York Times]