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During the week, students will work on a project called Investigate Your Community to produce detailed story pitches relevant to their summer internship positions.
The goal is to use this week to prepare you with a few story pitches so you can work immediately at your internship.
Investigate Your Community will equip students to:
Produce detailed story proposals Use data to find stories Create data visualizations Present data and multimedia on a simple website Utilize basic investigative reporting techniques on the beat Understand the value of diverse communities and information sources
At the end of the week, each student will produce a basic website that aggregates socio-economic and business data, and a list of reported story proposals. The interns’ newsrooms have provided data or suggestions for data sources, which you will see below.
[Getting Started]{.underline}
Each person has a folder with starter code and data, along with a memo from their newsroom. You will find starter code and data for your projects here: DJNF GitHub repositories
[Guidance on assignments]{.underline}
Sunday, June 1, 11:59 p.m. A one-paragraph story idea. –Submit as a Google Doc or an R Markdown document. Remember to allow permission sharing for Google Docs. This will reflect that you have read the memo and guidance from your newsroom (see below) and formulated a story idea based on a preliminary review of the data.
Monday, June 2, 11:59 p.m. Draft a story pitch memo. –Submit as a Google Doc or a link to an R Markdown document on your GitHub account. A minimum of 400 words, building on the story idea paragraph, that incorporates some of the best practices in pitching a story and generally follows the story pitch template and process as described in Monday’s lecture. This draft pitch will reflect a deeper exploration of the assigned data and hopefully some independent research. The best story pitches will have some context about recent coverage of this topic.
Wednesday, June 4, 11:59 p.m. Second draft of story pitch memos due. –Submit as an R Markdown document, providing a link to your GitHub account. A minimum of 600 words, this will build on Monday’s work. It will include at least one graphic, building on the Tuesday graphics workshop, and some summary data analysis, building on the data workshops since Sunday. This pitch should include summary tables and basic analysis, along with questions and a discussion of potential holes. The best pitches will cover two topics and have a rendered page from your GitHub account.
Saturday, June 7, 10 a.m. Present your website and story pitch to the group. –This will be a webpage rendered from your GitHub account that includes at least three graphics as well as several summary tables and analysis. Two separate story pitches will be presented, along with questions and a discussion of potential holes. Optional to have embedded video in the page.
Here are some examples from last year’s DJNF data journalism training:
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Hannah Rosenberger, at ASI Media/Counselor magazine, produced this analysis on name, image and likeness trends: https://hrosenberger.github.io/ASI-NIL-Project/
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Shifra Dayak, an intern at the Connecticut Mirror, produced this analysis of environment spill data: https://shifradayak.github.io/DJNF_Merrill/ct_env_spills.html.
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Michael Zhang, an intern at the Houston Landing, explored local election data: https://michaelzhangreporter.github.io/Houston_Campaign_Finance/