How does someone learn to write about culture?
Most reporters start covering culture without formal training in the field.
Challenge
Newsrooms expect reporters to understand complex artistic movements, interview difficult subjects, and explain cultural shifts to general audiences. Few journalism programs offer specialized courses in cultural reporting. Reporters often learn by making mistakes in public.
What we built
Teskarn started in 2017 when three culture editors realized their newsrooms kept hiring talented writers who lacked the tools to cover arts and heritage effectively. We designed webinars that focus on real reporting challenges: how to fact-check gallery claims, how to write about performance without clichés, how to cover cultural controversies without oversimplifying.
Our teaching structure
Each webinar follows a four-stage process that moves from observation to publication.
Context building
Participants review background materials and discuss the cultural landscape before the live session
Live instruction
Experts demonstrate reporting techniques using real case studies and answer questions in real time
Practice assignments
Reporters apply what they learned to a short reporting task and submit drafts for review
Feedback session
Instructors review submitted work and discuss common problems and successful approaches
Who teaches these sessions?
Our instructors are working journalists, not academics. They include culture editors at national publications, critics who cover specific art forms, and reporters who have built careers covering heritage and social movements. They share techniques they actually use in their own work.
We rotate instructors based on the topic. A webinar on covering visual arts might be led by a museum correspondent, while a session on music journalism might be taught by someone who has spent years interviewing performers and reviewing concerts.
Participant experience
What happens during a webinar?
Sessions run for ninety minutes. The first half is instruction and demonstration. The instructor walks through a reporting scenario, explains their decision-making process, and shows examples of published work. The second half is discussion. Participants ask questions, share challenges from their own reporting, and work through problems together. Most webinars include a short exercise where everyone practices a specific technique in real time.
Average webinars per participant annually
Journalists join from six continents