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Photo [4]: U.S. Department of State. Click to enlarge [3].

Reporter’s Toolbox: Journalism Associations, Other Groups Offer COVID-19 Reporting Resources

By Joseph A. Davis

Chances are that you will have to write something related to COVID-19, and also that you may be in unfamiliar territory. Help is on the way.

Quite a few outlets and organizations have compiled guides to resources that can aid you. Here’s a collection.

 

Journalism associations

• Society of Environmental Journalists. Our own SEJournal has published a backgrounder [5] on COVID-19 connections to energy and the environment, a TipSheet [6] on environmental aspects of the rescue bill and another TipSheet [7] on safely covering a public health emergency. SEJ.org also has a COVID-19 resource page [8] with the latest coronavirus headlines [9], events, funding info, articles and other resources.
• Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Toolbox. (formerly The Journalist's Toolbox). This SPJ blog, a unique compendium of handy things for journalists compiled and maintained by teacher and polymath Mike Reilley, published a special collection [10] focused on COVID-19 and related topics. Updates planned. 
• National Association of Science Writers. This large, membership-based professional organization has published a good resource list, “Resources for covering COVID-19 [11].” It also runs a free discussion list [12] on the subject, is conducting a survey [13] of journalists, and has issued a statement [14] advocating allowing government health officials to speak freely to reporters.
• Association of Health Care Journalists. AHCJ has published “Coronaviruses: Background and sources for your reporting [15].”
• State press associations. The Kansas press group has a collection of COVID-19 resources [16], some of which are only pertinent to Kansas. The Ohio News Media Association publishes a list [17] of COVID-19 resources, many of them Ohio-centric. Here are tips from the Iowa Newspaper Association [18]. Check to see if your state’s news association [19] has info.

 

Other journalism organizations

• First Draft. This international nonprofit is a partnership of organizations focused on journalism. It has published “Coronavirus: Resources for reporters [20],” and will update it.
• Poynter Institute. A national nonprofit offering all kinds of journalism education, Poynter has published many resources [21] for journalists covering COVID-19.

 

Open information organizations

• Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. This robust nonprofit devoted to press freedom (and related legal help) has published “Press freedom and government transparency during COVID-19 [22],” which may help you maneuver through the range of access restrictions stemming from the outbreak.
• Committee to Protect Journalists. This international nonprofit watchdog against threats to press freedom and safety has various COVID-19 resources [23]. Those include an excellent safety advisory [24] for journalists covering the virus.
• Student Press Law Center. This nonprofit focused on fighting censorship and other support for student journalists has published “Coronavirus toolkit [25].”

 

International journalism resources

• Global Investigative Journalism Network. This international nonprofit collaboration of journalism organizations has published “Investigating a Pandemic [26]” along with quite a few other COVID-19 journalism resources.
• Journalism.co.uk. This U.K.-based, for-profit journalists’ resource published “Lessons from Italy: best practices for field reporting during the coronavirus lockdown [27].”

 

Other journalism groups and centers

• Solutions Journalism Network. This nonprofit consortium of journalism organizations and J-schools supporting solutions journalism has published a newsletter [28], and started an exchange forum on COVID-19 topics for journalists.
• The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University has published several COVID-19-related items, including “The Value of Slow Journalism During a Rapidly-Developing Story of Pandemic [29].”

Joseph A. Davis [30] is a freelance writer/editor in Washington, D.C. who has been writing about the environment since 1976. He writes SEJournal Online's TipSheet [31], Reporter's Toolbox [2] and Issue Backgrounder [32], as well as compiling SEJ's weekday news headlines service EJToday [33]. Davis also directs SEJ's Freedom of Information Project and writes the WatchDog [34] column and WatchDog Alert [35].

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 5, No. 13. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page [36]. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here [37]. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here [36].