Canva Whiteboards: Collaboration that drives deeper storytelling
🌩️ Brainstorming: Journalists either love it or hate it. Why? Because good brainstorm sessions lead to great story ideas, sources, and packages. And bad brainstorms? Well ... they can leave us with much more confusion than clarity.
🌟 With the right structure, tools, and a little visual support, brainstorming can help journalism soar. Collaboration can fuel curiosity, and vice-versa.
🤔 When teams share ideas openly, they draw on different experiences and viewpoints, which leads to richer, more engaging coverage. It’s also a chance to ask “what if” questions, challenge assumptions, and think about the best formats for the story — whether text, video, or something interactive. Visual brainstorming — solo or in a group — takes that a step further:
- We retain more when we experience information visually and verbally.
- Visuals reduce confusion, creating a living map of the group’s thought.
- Using images, shapes, sketches, or even colorful sticky notes can activate different parts of the brain.
💪 Enter Canva Whiteboard templates, which can help put visual muscle behind strategic brainstorming for journalists. Here are a few existing Canva templates the Institute customized for journalism use:
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