Notion for journalists

A complex investigation stands or falls on overview. The Notion software program offers exactly that, presented in a simple and attractive design.

In this practical training you learn to use Notion as a research database: a place where you bring together, search, and organize documents, interviews, facts, contacts, notes, questions, and ideas. This way, during your research you simultaneously build the structure, evidence, and first draft of your story.

Target audience

This training is intended for journalists, researchers, documentary makers, and editors who want to organize their research better, and for research teams that want to collaborate securely and in a structured way on a dossier — also suitable for those who currently work with separate documents, spreadsheets, notes, folders, or links. No prior knowledge of Notion is required.

What you will learn

• Setting up a research database that fits your story, working method, and research question.
• Recording documents, interviews, web pages, public files, notes, and your own observations in an organized way.
• Adding relevant properties for each document, such as type, creator or source, date, subject, status, and a unique ID number.
• Linking original documents to your database via upload, embed, or hyperlink.
• Recording substantive information per document or interview, such as contact details, transcripts, summaries, key excerpts, conclusions, follow-up questions, and correspondence.
• Sorting, filtering, and grouping databases, and viewing them in different views, for example as a table, timeline, calendar, or list.
• Building a master file in which you organize the facts, quotes, and observations according to the structure of your story.
• Keeping sources and evidence continuously linked to the information you want to use in your story.
• Collaborating within one project, dividing tasks, and making research progress visible.
• Using Notion AI responsibly to search within your own material, summarize documents, translate, and formulate new questions.
• Structuring a project so that you can later quickly find what you already know, what is still missing, and which source or claim needs further verification.

Structure

The training follows the rhythm of a journalistic investigation.

You start with the question of what information you need to record during an investigation and how to prevent documents, quotes, contacts, and ideas from becoming scattered across different folders and apps. Next, you set up a workable research database, with properties and templates for, among other things, documents, interviews, and notes.

Then you learn how to add sources, make them searchable, and provide them with context. You build a system in which you not only store files, but also note what is in them, why they are relevant, what questions they raise, and how they relate to other sources.

Finally, you connect the database to a master file. In it, you organize the most important facts, quotes, and observations according to the timeline or structure of your story. This turns Notion not only into an archive, but into an instrument for analyzing your research, monitoring progress, and writing the final story.

Teaching method

You first get a short, step-by-step explanation of Notion's most important features, with demonstrations of tables, properties, filters, sorts, relations, views, and pages.

After that, you get hands-on practice in your own research database based on a template. Using examples, you create a timeline, master file, and source map, tailored to your own ongoing investigation. You then practice adding and describing sources.

There is of course room for individual questions about structure, collaboration, source management, and safe working methods.

Duration

One day. The training can also be offered as a compact workshop or as an in-company training. The exact duration, format, and emphasis are tailored to the participants' experience and the needs of the organization.

Outcome

After completion you will have:

• A working research database in Notion, set up for journalistic research.
• A clear structure for documents, interviews, contacts, questions, facts, and observations.
• A method for organizing and searching sources and linking them directly to relevant excerpts and conclusions.
• An initial setup for a master file in which your material is organized according to your story.
• More overview of what you already know, what is still missing, and which claims need further evidence.
• A more efficient way to share material with colleagues, editors, and chief editors.
• A dossier that serves not only as an archive, but also as an instrument for analysis, writing, and accountability.
• A method that lets you quickly trace your journalistic findings back to the original source later on.