It’s been five years since data was declared to be one of the world’s most valuable resources, and journalists are now confronted daily with the need to file data-rich stories in a hurry.
To help journalists sharpen their investigative, data analysis and presentation skills, the National Press Foundation will bring together 20 fellows from across the country in Washington D.C. for a five-day program on accountability journalism.
This fellowship will offer skills, top sources and best practices to journalists who want to hold federal and state and local governments accountable for how and where taxpayer funds are spent.
Since July 2020, NPF has been offering fellowships designed to help journalists hone their ability to track trillions of dollars of federal relief spending. This fellowship will also focus on how to track 2022 infrastructure spending, how to report on the effectiveness of efforts to decrease racial inequities and how to follow the money in Washington from afar.
In our latest survey, NPF stakeholders told us the skills their newsrooms most need, and this fellowship is designed to provide them. We will have hands-on training in data techniques, including where to find federal data, how to scrape it and how to best use Excel to analyze it. Since many reporters now need to generate their own graphics, we will teach Datawrapper as well as Tableau. Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, we’ll also introduce campaign finance tips and tools to help reporters track the flow of money to state and local races.
Every journalist selected for this program will be offered the opportunity to pair with a volunteer data scientist, through NPF’s partnership with DataKind DC. Previous NPF fellows found that these partnerships helped them execute complex, data-driven investigative stories.
The all-expenses-paid program covers airfare, ground transportation, hotel costs and most meals.
This fellowship is for U.S.-based journalists only. We greatly value diversity in all our programs and particularly seek applications from local and nonprofit news organizations, journalists covering communities that have been disproportionately hurt by the pandemic; Black, Indigenous and other journalists of color; and those attempting to do public-interest reporting about news deserts.
The program will be offered in person, adhering to prevailing social distancing guidance. We can only accept fully vaccinated fellows.
The deadline to apply is November 29, 2021
This is the third accountability fellowship offered by the National Press Foundation with sponsorship from the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation. NPF is solely responsible for the content.