The McCormick Foundation and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies are funding specialized reporting institutes in 2012 and are taking applications now. I saw this and had an idea for one, but I’m not convinced it’s fully baked. Help me out by adding your suggestions in the comments below.
The idea (the short version):
Reporting for News Apps: Getting, Cleaning, Vetting, Analyzing and Visualizing Data to Tell Stories on the Web.
The slightly longer version:
Done right, news applications require a combination of skills, from investigative reporting to data literacy to information design principles to programming. A reporter working on a news app could face open records challenges, dirty data, questions about validity and accuracy, the formation of analytical approaches and the need to know when geographic data should be a map or not. And that’s before the first line of code hits the internet. There’s a lot to learn – and a lot to learn from. This specialized reporting institute would focus on the challenges specific to reporting for news apps, how the steps can be improved, how other fields within and outside of journalism have tackled these problems and how the results of the reporting-for-news-apps process can be extended to other parts of journalism.
Limitations
McCormick/Poynter have specific goals they wish to fulfill with their conferences. Full list here.
Specifically, they want the institute to focus on a topic. The first topic that came to my mind was education data, specifically school test score data that every state has and many news organizations produce apps around. Thoughts?
They place an emphasis on the diversity of the conference, in type of journalist who attends (e.g. broadcast, print, online), type of outlet (newspaper, ethnic media, independent) and the speakers. Technology conferences have a well-earned “white dude” problem. Thoughts on how we reach beyond the core of nerdy dudes who do this now and beyond the proto-nerd who might be interested in attending?
I think this is solid idea for a conference, but I’m not sure it’s fully baked. So, instead of me sitting here wondering what else I should put in the application I’m going to submit by the deadline of Nov. 15, I’m going to ask you. What else should I put in there?