News

African Storytelling Challenge Panelist Shares Tips for "Disruptive" Business Reporting

In his two decades as a journalist in Kenya, Wallace Kantai has reported top business news for all of Kenya’s leading newspapers, and interviewed some of the world's most high-profile business leaders and policymakers.

Aspiring business reporters might imagine he shows up for interviews armed with statistics and questions, but his advice is the opposite: show up without notes.

News Contest Launched to Engage Citizens on Health

Nigerian journalists and media organizations can win cash, mentoring and in-house technical assistance through a new story competition aimed at amplifying citizen voices on vital health issues.

Winners of the Hala Nigeria Story Challenge will receive prizes up to $1,000 and a chance to attend an exclusive EditorsLab with a faculty of international experts.

For Code for Africa, Creating an App is Just the First Step

Code for Africa has helped newsrooms in South Africa, Uganda, Kenya and other countries to liberate data sets and package them as apps that deliver information citizens need in everyday life.

But Justin Arenstein, the initiative's chief strategist and an ICFJ Knight International Journalism Fellow, says developing an app should never be the end of the line.

Raising Financial Literacy Through Data Journalism

The Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring crude oil from Canada to the Gulf, has been hotly debated for environmental and economic reasons. But the social cost on Native American communities has been overlooked—until now.

Reporter Mary Annette Pember’s story, “Will Keystone XL Pipeline Pump Sexual Violence Into South Dakota?” is just one of hundreds by journalists in an International Center for Journalists program that aims to bring coverage of important financial topics to minority communities.

Justin Arenstein: Data Journalism as a Revenue Stream is Catching on in Africa

With traditional advertising no longer a sustainable business model, news outlets worldwide are experimenting with alternatives, from holding events to putting up paywalls. Now, a new model is on the rise: data as revenue.

In the U.S., ProPublica recently opened a data store, charging a one-time fee for cleaned-up data sets.

Knight Fellow and Twitter Team Up to Illustrate Women's Inequality

ICFJ Knight International Journalism Fellow Mariana Santos, an expert in data visualization and animation, worked with Twitter data editor Simon Rogers on this animated video to showcase women’s inequality in the workplace.

Their video decided to focus on some of the reasons why, even in 2014, many women are still losing in the workplace.

Global Business Journalism Program in China Accepting Applications

English-speaking journalists worldwide can apply for ICFJ's Global Business Journalism program in China.

Geographic Data Powers Climate Change Coverage in Indonesia

Frequent flooding and critically low crop yields are just two of the warning signs of climate change in Indonesia, home to the world’s third-largest tropical rainforest and some of the highest levels of biological diversity on the globe.

To shed light on these crucial issues, data journalists have launched the news site Ekuatorial, which offers the latest environmental news and engaging, easy-to-understand interactive maps of oceans, forests and natural disasters in Indonesia.

How To Make Open Data Relevant to the Public

It’s time to transform open data from a trendy concept among policy wonks and news nerds into something tangible to everyday life for citizens, businesses and grassroots organizations. Here are some ideas to help us get there:
**1.

Make Data Come Alive with Free, Simple Tool

To sustain user attention and drive audience engagement, journalists and news organizations should learn to use data visualizations.

Data visualizations let you explain a set of data simply with an infographic, an interactive application or a chart. With multiple stories competing for users' attention on the boundless Internet, data visualizations are a creative way to interest users in your content and add context or a different perspective to your story. Leading media organizations are using Datawrapper, a simple and free tool, to improve their storytelling.