In case you need a reminder that good journalism tips can come from anywhere, a Redditor named ‘EchoOfRain’ giving advice to a cub reporter looking for guidance on covering his/her first meeting offered up this gem:
A tip for taking notes: Make a quick sketch in your notebook of who is sitting where and assign them letters, numbers, colors, initials, whatever. That way, when people start talking you can keep focus on what they are saying and simply annotate who they are and figure it out later. This has saved me so much time!
A simple, yet oh so effective, hack you can easily incorporate into your j-toolbox.
[...] A simple hack to take quicker notes when covering meetings [...]