Journalism is a vast field. It involves a lot of work. Along with reporting comes a lot of legwork that the audience are not even aware of. Research, pitching, data, sourcing quotes, re reading something twice, thrice to see if you have missed anything- that and more is what it takes to write or read a good story. 

We, as the best Public Relations agency, have done some research and put together some incredibly useful tools for journalists. Here-check them out and tell us your favorite. 

Research is one crucial part of journalism.

1. TechForReporters:  A version of Yahoo answers, it caters to journalists in the tech industry. The platform offers free access to many databases and some expats like engineers and designers who can help. 

2. Facebook Live Map: We live in the world of digitization. News stories these days break every minute on the internet and social media. From natural calamities to even celebrity malfunctions, everything is reported on social media. Facebook Livestream helps journalists stay up to date with the current trends. Through a live map, they can get access, verification, and videos with just one click. 

3. Platforms like Slack have also proven to be great for journalists and also for public relation agencies. Instead of group chats constantly bothering you on your personal device, you get to keep all the professional information on Slack. The platform is fully organised and the content there can be placed under different categories like a story or topic, or even team concerns. This way your personal device is free from work calls and messages. 

4. Google docs has become one of the most important tools for journalists. It’s an easy to use, share and view platform where notes can be taken, documents can be shared and even work can be done offline. Google Docs is cloud based and is available for free, and needless to say, cloud has totally revolutionized the way we do business, right? Even if your power goes out, or your system crashes, your data will go nowhere and this is one of the biggest advantages of the platform. 

5. A tripod: It can be a journalist’s best friend. As a journalist, you have to look out for stories and sometimes that means going out and exploring. Taking huge cameras can be a tiring task but if you just carry a tripod, you can record videos with your smartphone and use them. 

For writers, some tools that are extremely useful are Maestra, Grammarly, Authority, Buzzsumo, CreaWriter, Evernote etc. For transcription service, Rev and Temi are good options. Advanced Google search, Advanced twitter search, Tineye, dataportals.org, Tabula, DataWrangler, Signal, InfluenceGrid, DataWrapper, Echosec, StoryMap.js, StoryBottle, Flourish, GIF Brewery, CrowdTangle Search, Riddle are some digital tools that every journalist must try. 

We hope our list has helped you shortlist some incredibly useful tools to make your journalism better and to reach a great audience. Tell us which one have you tried?