How India Lives (HIL), with support from the Google News Initiative (GNI), is thrilled to open sign ups for Data Journalism Accelerator, a six-month intensive training and mentoring fellowship program that will provide in-depth coaching and mentoring support to a chosen cohort of 20 journalists / newsrooms from India and help them embrace a data-driven story-telling approach for their newsrooms.
The program is open to journalists working in Indian newsrooms as well as freelancers from varied backgrounds and experience levels. No prior data journalism experience is required to participate.
Participants will be selected via an open call. Preference will be given to applicants from under-represented backgrounds and those working with small and mid-sized newsrooms. Applications will open on May 8, 2023. The last date to apply is May 30, 2023. To apply, please click here.
The training will be led by members of the HIL team, comprising experienced journalists, data analysts and programmers. The program will also include guest lectures from top journalists who have done award-winning work in the space of data journalism and other subject experts.
Broadly, the program will be broken into three parts, spread over a period of six months.
Part 1: In-person workshop
The first part will be a 3-day immersion on data journalism that will address topics like data sources, data analysis, utilitarian and easy-to-use tools, visual presentation and narration. It will guide participants on how they can do data stories, as well as marshal data and its possibilities more effectively even in conventional narration formats.
This immersion will be held in Delhi from June 29 to July 1 (Thursday to Saturday). Stay and travel of the selected participants will be covered by the program.
Some of the topics the workshop will cover are:Part 2: Online sessions
The second track of the program consists of 20 online sessions. These will be scheduled once a week, for 3 hours each, typically on Saturday mornings. Each of these sessions will delve deeper into specific domains related to data, tools, analytics, software and storytelling.
Topics will include:The third part will be oriented around mentoring, where the diverse HIL team will be available on demand for one-on-one sessions around skill building, problem solving and mentoring participants to help them with their stories.