Alan Geere

Writing and reporting

Speaking to six strangers a day to practise interviewing; shouting intros out of the window to see if they work and writing stories about mundane events happening in front of you. Alan’s methods might be unorthodox, but they work. Forget the formula news format taught by and for local newspapers and learn modern, approachable people-centred writing and reporting. Email for more details

Sub-editing

Alan’s old friend David Montgomery has seen the future and it doesn’t have any subs. “Sub-editing is a twilight world, checking things you don’t really need to check…” the chief executive of European newspaper giant Mecom told a bunch of sceptical journalists. As a man who learned his trade polishing other people’s words it’s an interesting position to take. His German and Polish newspapers might not need subs any more, but a lot of publications – both print and online – do.
Learn how to rewrite with speed and sympathy, cut with care and precision and combine copy with flair and accuracy. Find out why genuine subs love every word, especially in headlines and captions which are the shop-window of subbing. Email for more details

Design

Learn the magic of putting headlines, pictures and copy together to create pages that entice and excite. Yes, you’ll learn all the tips of Quark or InDesign but more importantly you’ll know why it does or doesn’t work. Plenty of cutting and pasting with glue and coloured paper as well as sticky fingers on the computer keyboard. Become skilled at better design for newspapers, magazines, newsletters, flyers and notes for the milkman. Email for more details

Editorial management

Alan’s first editor’s chair was the Diss Express, then (and still) one of the country’s smallest weekly papers with four and a half staff on a good day. He’s since shepherded 140 journalists on the Tribune in Arizona, worked with the big bosses at an international corporate headquarters and is just back from leading a workforce of 100 on the Caribbean island of Trinidad & Tobago.
He will show you all the best practices of editorial management, but also highlights the worst so you know what not to do. Learn how to wrestle with budgets, industrial relations, human resources and your own boss – and still have time to do some journalism. Email for more details

Writing for online and video journalism or subbing (remember that?) and news writing. Training for all journalists, from new recruit to editor.

Alan (pink shirt) on a reporting exercise with journalists in remote northern Afghanistan