ICFJ Knight Fellowships

How to Mold Women Tech Leaders in News Media: Chicas Poderosas at Stanford

Invited and inspired by Mariana Moura Santos, founder of Chicas Poderosas, 35 women journalists and developers from Latin America met for nearly four days at Stanford U for a cornucopia of sessions on technology, innovation and, most of all, teamwork.

ICFJ Knight Fellow: Let Journalism Be Weird

Journalism has always been obsessed with perfection. The story has to be dead to rights, the copy desk better make sure it’s a semicolon, not an em-dash. If a headline’s wrong there will be hell to pay come the news meeting tomorrow morning.

There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, it’s fantastic. Papers of record should, and must, be held to the most stringent and reliable quality. My issue is when this mentality of perfection crawls from the editor’s desk to the business desk and the production line.

The Challenges Reporters Face While Covering Ebola

When the World Health Organization officially confirmed an outbreak of Ebola in Sierra Leone late in May last year, Toronto Star global health reporter Jennifer Yang immediately knew it was a big international story and she had to cover it.

But she also knew she would first have to overcome some major obstacles if she hoped to travel to West Africa for the story: budgets at her paper had been consistently cut, and it would be difficult to gauge the scale of the outbreak from distant Canada well enough to convince her superiors that it was a story worth covering.

ICFJ Knight Roundup: Code for Africa in Cape Town, Moldovan Hackathon

Each week as part of the Knight International Media Innovators blog, the ICFJ Knight team will round up stories focused on how their fellows are making an impact in the field.

Find out more about the fellows' projects by clicking here.