Journalists around the world now have a multilingual resource hub to help with training and tips for covering the COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 Courses & Resources hub has been launched by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin, in partnership with UNESCO and funded by the European Union.
The online hub features self-directed courses, webinars, briefings and other resources in 13 languages. The hub itself is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese, the three main languages in which the Knight Center operates, but the resources and courses are translated into a growing number of languages
The hub project is part of a series of initiatives that the Knight Center has organized to help journalists navigate the challenges of covering COVID-19. We began these efforts in Spring 2020, immediately after the declaration of the pandemic.
The Knight Center's Journalism Courses program has worked with United Nations agencies — specifically UNESCO, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Health Organization — to produce COVID-19 resources for journalists, including massive open online courses, self-directed courses, and webinars in a variety of languages. These resources have already benefited thousands of journalists from countries around the world.
“We are grateful for the support we have received from UNESCO and other UN agencies since the very beginning of the pandemic. That support has allowed the Knight Center to reach thousands of journalists around the world with practical instruction, guidance and knowledge that helped them to improve their coverage of the pandemic,” said professor Rosental Alves, UNESCO Chair in Communication at the University of Texas at Austin and Knight Center’s director.
“The ‘Courses & Resources’ hub we have opened on our Journalism Courses site will facilitate access to the content of a variety of projects and will be at the disposal of journalists from anywhere in the world at any time,” Alves said.
At the top of the hub, users can search for self-directed courses and webinars by keyword, and filter by language or resource type. These COVID-19 courses and webinars cover topics like vaccines, variants, medications and disinformation.
The self-directed courses are divided into modules that feature video presentations and transcripts, as well as readings and links to other resources. They can be taken at any time and on the user’s own schedule.
In the middle of the page, users will find special briefings written by science and health journalists who have offered best practices and insights on covering COVID-19 in five different regions of the Global South: Latin America and the Caribbean, North Africa and the Middle East, West Africa, Eastern Africa, and Southern Africa. Users are able to filter them by language. They are being published as part of a Knight Center initiative in partnership with UNESCO and funded by the World Health Organization.
At the bottom of the page, users will find a list of resources from organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO), Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Dart Center, and others.
This hub is an ongoing project and will be updated with more resources as the Knight Center continues its efforts to help journalists around the world work on the most important story of our time.
