Media Innovation

A Digital Path to Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Latin America is creating a network of journalists, technologists and media entrepreneurs across the region. This network is harnessing the power of digital tools to create sustainable news businesses that provide news and information in the public interest.

In recent years, Panama’s government has increased the availability of data to citizens. But this alone cannot transform governments. Media and civil society engagement must help unlock the potential of open data, make it clear and useful for citizens, and reveal information that can expose and prevent abuses of power.

TruthBuzz is now recruiting five full-time Fellows to work in newsrooms in some of the most populous nations: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and the United States. Modeled on the ICFJ Knight Fellowships, the TruthBuzz Fellowship will embed experts in these outlets to help reporters adopt compelling storytelling methods that improve the reach and impact of fact-checking and help “inoculate” audiences against false or misleading information.

Women in the developing world face even greater challenges than their developed-world counterparts breaking into IT and taking leadership roles in the field – especially when it comes to news media. Chicas Poderosas is addressing this challenge by helping to bring Latina women in the Americas into the forefront of digital journalism.

ICFJ launched the Back in the Newsroom program in collaboration with the Gannett Foundation and Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism and Communication. An incubator for young journalistic talent, the program aims to improve newsroom diversity through partnerships with historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

In October 2016, the International Center for Journalists, in partnership with Code for Africa, will bring together 75 journalists, editors, technologists, civic watchdogs and digital designers in Casablanca, Morocco, for an intensive, three-day data boot camp.