Dan Petty, a Senior Editor at The Denver Post, will lead the first Google News Lab training at Grady.
Google News Lab training kicks off at the Grady College on Feb. 15 and will mark the first live event since the James M. Cox Jr. Institute for Journalism Innovation, Management and Leadership joined the Google News Lab’s new university training network.
There will be two sessions open to all Grady students in Studio 100. The first open session will be held from 12:20 p.m. to 1:10 p.m. followed by another open session from 2:30 p.m. to 3:20 p.m. Earlier in the day, students in Grady’s Investigative Reporting class will participate in an exclusive training session.
Google News Lab partners with the Society of Professional Journalists to produce the training sessions and deploys highly-skilled news professionals to lead the sessions. Dan Petty, a Senior Editor at The Denver Post, will lead the training at Grady. He focuses extensively on audience development, search engine optimization and social media. Petty, who joined the newspaper in 2009, was previously digital director of sports and social media editor. In addition to editing duties, Petty photographs and writes stories, usually about sports.
“We are excited to offer our students this exceptional training opportunity,” said Keith Herndon, director of the Cox Institute. “Interacting with a professional such as Dan Petty and learning key newsgathering skills will make it a great day at Grady.”
The Cox Institute, a training and industry outreach unit of the Grady College’s Journalism Department at the University of Georgia, affiliated with an initial group of 46 universities from around the globe to form a collaborative forum for sharing resources and best practices on training with Google’s extensive set of tools for journalists and news organizations.
Google News Lab said its university network will promote knowledge sharing among its member schools and will feature exclusive training through both in-person and remote sessions. Also, members of the network will collaborate with Google News Lab on white papers and will provide feedback on Google products, project ideas and training curriculum.
