Fact Checking Made Easy
Accuracy and Credibility for Bloggers and Authors
Updated for 2021!
If you're a blogger, author or online publisher looking for a competitive edge, consider reliability and accuracy.
It takes just a bit of consistent effort to achieve writing that readers can enjoy and fans recommend without hesitation, because you've cleared it of careless bloopers and mortifying blunders. With a simple fact checking routine, you're elevated to a higher echelon of writers.
Instructor Marcia Yudkin has been a published author for nearly 40 years. She has written for national magazines like the New York Times Magazine, Ladies Home Journal and TWA Ambassador, for big-name publishers like HarperCollins and Penguin and for National Public Radio.
She created the course because she witnessed how humiliating it can be when readers and important industry contacts catch a blogger or author making dumb mistakes, such as putting Sydney in Austria rather than Australia or mixing up sudoku (the number game) and seppuku (ritual suicide).
“Fact Checking Made Easy" consists of 13 practical lessons totaling more than an hour and a half of video instruction. At its heart are three complete now-you-try-it exercises (and another partial one) where you give fact checking a go and then compare your findings with Marcia's answers and analysis. It's hands-on learning at its best.
Besides the video lessons and exercises, you have access to full written transcripts of the lessons, along with several handouts that make the learning process more convenient.
Among the points you learn in this course:
* How to create a fact-checking routine that catches errors and inconsistencies
* Where and how to check various kinds of facts - including an amazingly helpful, taxpayer-funded free research resource
* The difference between opinions that don't warrant a fact check and statements that do
* Pitfalls in getting names and numbers correct
* The importance of recognizing and discounting biased or outdated sources of information
* How not to fall for and pass along hoaxes, baseless rumors and myths that have already gone around the Internet thirty thousand times
* The kinds of mistakes that run the greatest risk of landing you in legal trouble, and how to avoid those
* The best way to handle it if an error does nevertheless slip by you
Whether you write a blog, a newsletter, a book or ebook or simply private emails to potential joint-venture partners, avoid loss of face, build credibility and be a writer that people praise, instead of pointing out your should-have-known-that errors.
It's fun, it's practical, it's important - and you get lifetime access to the course once you enroll.
So sign up for “Fact Checking Made Easy" today!
If you're interested in making this course available to your entire staff or a select group of employees, simply email Marcia. She'll work something out with you.
Marcia Yudkin
1. Why Fact Check? The Top 5 Reasons
Lesson 1 Transcript
2. What to Check
Lesson 2 Transcript
Lesson 2 Exercise
Lesson 2 Exercise Answers
3. Your Fact Checking Routine
Lesson 3 Transcript
4. Where to Check
Lesson 4 Transcript
Recommended Resources
5. Getting Names Right
Lesson 5 Transcript
6. Getting Numbers Right
Lesson 6 Transcript
7. Confirming Research Results
Lesson 7 Transcript
8. Now You Try It #1
Lesson 8 Transcript
Lesson 8 Exercise
Lesson 8 Exercise Answers
9. Now You Try It #2
Lesson 9 Transcript
Lesson 9 Exercise
Lesson 9 Exercise Answers
10. Now You Try It #3
Lesson 10 Transcript
Lesson 10 Exercise
Lesson 10 Exercise Answers
11. Danger Zones
Lesson 11 Transcript
12. Information Responsibility
Lesson 12 Transcript
13. Course Conclusion
Lesson 13 Transcript
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