Evaluation of an online self-paced constructive journalism training course for health reporting

Constructive journalism has been proposed to address concerns with news reporting, including on health topics, by increasing trust, and reducing misperceptions fostered by traditional news practices. However, integrating constructive journalism into existing practice has challenges, including limited training resources and practical guidance. Accordingly, we developed an online, self-paced (∼5 hour), health reporting-focused constructive journalism training course and evaluated it with a pre-post survey and news creation task. After the course, journalists and journalism students (N = 23) reported improvements in confidence to report constructively and on health topics, and increased intentions to use constructive techniques for future health reporting. Participants also increased their use of constructive techniques including giving greater reporting space to solutions, empowerment, and future orientation, and greater diversity of sources, but reporting on context decreased. We make practical suggestions for future constructive journalism training and invite educators and journalism professionals to use our open-source training materials.