Evernote for journalists

[_writingwild_ 3]

Hi, I'm looking for an Evernote course or tutorial specifically for journalists that will orientate me to all the features and make sure I am able to use Evernote optimally. Does such a thing exist? Thanks, Dianne

[gazumped 12,079]

Hi.  There are no specific courses for journalists that I'm aware of,  and given that Evernote is currently re-inventing itself under a new ownership,  you may find an absolutely up-to-date feature description hard to come by.  Having said that,  general help is here in the Forums and online - https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us

Many YouTube creators offer start-up videos,  including these - 

https://daveedwardsmedia.com/category/evernote/

https://www.harmonenterprises.com/learn-to-use-evernote#evernote-freebies

https://dottotech.com/evernote-quick-start-lp/

One of the benefits of Evernote (IMHO) is that it should be adaptable to your own ideal workflow (everyone has a different approach) but if you list out processes like:

• Recording Interviews
  • best done in third-party apps (transcription is increasingly available) with an MP3 file attached to a note
  • taking notes in Evernote while also recording in the app risks losing copy as well as the recording
• Research - collecting / collating information
  • emails direct to Evernote
  • Web Clipper saving part or all of web-based material
  • Scanning / mobile imaging for paper documents
  • Searching
• Drafting copy
  • Stacks, notebooks and notes. Titles and Tags. Word Processor attachments.  Sharing
• Collaboration
  • RTE (real time editing)

-I'm sure the assembled brains trust here will be pleased to add more topics you could look into...

Best advice is always - don't wait to find the best method and then start;  jump in now with both feet.  Put everything in Evernote and work out how best to manage it as you go.  You'll find out pretty quickly what works and what does not.  It's (usually) a forgiving environment - I'm currently on my 5th(ish) iteration of my own GTD process and I haven't lost any information -that I'm aware of- yet...

Good Luck!!

 

 

[PinkElephant 8,857]

You already got some hints.

Check out the web clipper, it allows to save practically every website in a static, unchangable copy in your account. It is a browser extension, available for major browsers.

Make sure you have very high account security: Unique, strong password and 2FA enabled.

Use tags for organizing - they are much more flexible than notebooks to structure content.

[Dave-in-Decatur 4,006]

@gazumped's advice is, as usual, brilliant. I would add that if you have specific how-to questions, you can post them in the forums and usually get pretty speedy responses. One of the great things about Evernote is that it is a generalist app and service, and therefore adaptable to a very wide range of purposes, so there are people on the forums who range from business people to researchers to writers, etc.

One thing that Evernote is not necessarily brilliant at is envisioning and revising the overall organization of a longish writing project. If you're doing a multiple-article series, you may need something else (like Scrivener) to do that level of organizing. But if you're doing average-length articles, a single Evernote note should do. You can gather research material in multiple notes and then copy, shape, and craft it into the article's own note. Notebooks and tags are good for organization (if you like watching fireworks, post a question like "Which is better, notebooks or tags?" 😅 ) One of the most helpful practices is to create a TOC / master/ head note for an article, with links to individual notes on specific subtopics. Evernote will create backlinks from the individual notes back to the TOC note.

As you can see, people here love to offer advice, so ask away!

[VincentC 355]

I would add that Vlad Campos has a number of helpful videos, including one that is something like "getting started in Evernote in five minutes."  May not be the title, but that's the gist, as I recall.  Just do a YouTube search on his name and his channel will come right up.  Also, it's useful to pay attention to how old any information you look at is.  Evernote has been changing a lot and, while older resources are still likely to have a lot of relevance, some of the information in them is likely to be dated.  And you want to look only at information about Evernote version 10.   Evernote will end support of the "legacy" version of Evernote, version numbers less than 10, any day now.

 

Vinnie

[_writingwild_ 3]

Thanks for the really helpful advice. Looking forward to exploring and developing a process that will work for myself and my editors.