The digital age makes us permanently adapt to new information technologies, and journalists are not an exception. If you want your story to be read by as many people as possible, you need to be the first to share it. What other skills a journalist needs in order to be the best online, and what other secrets hide behind computer screens? The students of the School of Advanced Journalism learned about it at the course of Digital Journalism, conducted by Dumitru Ciorici, co-founder of news portals www.unimedia.md and www.agora.md.

Like other courses, Digital Journalism combined theory and practice. To start, Dumitru Ciorici spoke to SAJ students about the technical aspects that one needs to know in order to launch a news website. Thus, they found out how to self-finance a news portal, how to earn money with an online portal, and how to promote web content. Future journalists also learned about search engines, how to calculate the audience of a website, and what criteria determine the increase or decrease of online traffic. Dumitru Ciorici believes that in order to have success in digital journalism, “a media outlet should be looked at as a business model, not only a news factory.” The second day of the course was truly impressive and full of emotions. Students participated in a master class where they tried, together with the trainer, to operate a drone. After filming everything around them, students had to make news stories about their experience and about the new things they learned that day. Then, divided into teams, they analyzed the content of their stories. A special emphasis was placed on the headline, which is very important, according to Dumitru Ciorii, because the headline makes people access the story. “The headline should be intriguing, interesting, and it should attract readers,” he said.

A new challenge expected students on the third day, when they attended for the first time an operative meeting of the Chisinau Mayor’s Office, from which they had to produce three news stories. Materials had to be well-documented, to have sources and … to be submitted not later than 15.00. So, students had only five hours to prepare. “It was difficult, because it was our first experience of this kind,” confessed student Petru Garciu. “An online news office works at high speed, and journalists must write quickly, correctly, and neutrally,” said Dumitru Ciorici. However, the majority of students met the deadline, and Dumitru identified the quickest students – Lia Ciutac, Liliana Croitor, and Irina Gusan.

At the end of the course, Dumitru Ciorici explained to students how to make the best videos for the web, how to write the best stories, and how to produce the best images. He mentioned that the entire content that appears on an online platform needs to correspond to the newest criteria in the field, and journalists must constantly grow and learn new information technologies. “The success of a news website consists of several basic elements: interesting and true content and maximum speed,” Dumitru Ciorici concluded.

To convince students of the truth of all those words, Dumitru invited them for a visit to the Agora news portal. Young people were impressed by new technologies; they spoke with website employees and reporters, and tried the control board of a real studio. At the end of the visit and the course, some students enjoyed a game of table tennis at the Agora office.