Data Journalism Program Design

Internews has prepared a set of documents for a data journalism curriculum. The tools and research offered in this section should help practitioners design their own robust data journalism program. Over the last few years, there has been a significant shift in data journalism education away from short-term activities like boot camps and hackathons. They have been replaced by more sustained and sustainable interventions that produce watchdog journalism. In the Global North and South, donors are paying attention to the importance of data driven information reaching local communities. Internews has been a leader in steering data journalism in this direction. There is a growing awareness that the challenge of teaching data journalism in many countries is split straight down the middle between teaching data and teaching journalism — in countries where neither data science nor public interest journalism are particularly well developed. Open data can be a boon to democracy — but only if there are professionals capable and motivated to transform that data into engaging and relevant information for the public.
This document includes a variety of building blocks to growing data literacy, and eventually, data journalism, in a variety of contexts