education

Covering the Extractives Industry: Big Data, New Tools, and Journalism

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The extractives sector (oil, gas, and mining) continues to be an important subject for journalists, particularly in developing countries. Revenues from oil, gas and mining contribute substantially to GDP and in many cases make up the bulk of government revenue. Indeed, among 29 nations that in 2011 were implementing the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), 10 reported extractives revenues totaling over one-quarter of their respective government budgets (six of which were actually over 50%).

Top 10 in Data Journalism

Data Journalism Top 10: Queen Elizabeth’s Reign, Arctic Fires, Taiwan Street Food, Brain Drain

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Our weekly NodeXL and human curation of the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter features The Financial Times’ 10 charts visualizing developments in the United Kingdom during Elizabeth’s reign, The Marshall Project’s look at how government Covid-19 relief funds were used, and Taiwan Data Stories’ scrollytelling project about Taiwan’s iconic street food.

COVID-19

Reporting on COVID-19 in Africa: A Collaborative Story Idea List

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What is the best way into the COVID-19 story? Pick an angle. No matter what your beat is, the pandemic is seeping into almost every story. In response, the Kampala-based African Centre for Media Excellence (ACME) created a running list of story ideas on COVID-19 which stretches across beats: from agriculture and food to the economy, education, religion, sports, and arts and entertainment.

Top 10 in Data Journalism

Data Journalism Top 10: Pandemic Cocktails, Pricey Food, Zoonotic Diseases, the World’s Top Songs

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If you have tried to mix cocktails at home lately, you’re not alone. Tired of waiting for bars and restaurants to reopen, more consumers have started buying premium alcohol, according to data published by the Financial Times. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from March 1 to 7, which tracks the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter, also found an analysis by Bloomberg showing that global food prices have hit their highest level in six years, an explainer of the connection between bats and virus outbreaks by Reuters, an interactive piece on Atlantic currents by The New York Times, and a musical map by The Pudding.

education

A Right, Not a Privilege: Tips on Covering Education

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Education is the path to development. It creates choices and opportunities for people in terms of access to employment, reduces the twin burdens of poverty and disease, and empowers people. For nations as a whole, education produces a more skilled and competitive workforce that can attract better quality foreign investment, thus opening the doors to economic and social prosperity for society as a whole.

However, people often do not see how these global goals can be translated to local realities. The media plays a key role in forming opinion, helping to ensure that citizens and politicians alike recognise that there is no room for complacency in tackling the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) related to education.

aids

Intro: Reporter’s Guide to Millennium Development Goals

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Editor’s Note: For the next two weeks, GIJN is running a series drawn from the newly released Reporter’s Guide to the Millennium Development Goals: Covering Development Commitments for 2015 and Beyond, published by the International Press Institute. Agreed to in 2000, the UN Millennium Goals comprise an ambitious agenda to improve quality of life around the world, focusing on such issues as poverty, gender equality, and education.

Resources

The Journalist Survival Guide

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Journalists face some unique problems keeping their data and communications secure in the digital environment. This tends to be especially true when doing investigations, working in war zones or traveling in unfamiliar terrain. If these are concerns for you, The Journalist Survival Guide has your back — or, more precisely, offers insights and expertise on how you can protect yourself, your sources, your data and digital equipment. Good stuff to know about because it can get dangerous out there.

Alberto Cairo

Why Journalism Education Faces a Worrisome Future

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If you want to study journalism, you have more choices today, at lower cost, and of higher quality than ever. Sometimes you will get that at a university and sometimes not. That represents a challenge for universities. In a lecture at a journalism conference in Puebla, Mexico, I described a personal experience taking a course in data visualization from one of the world leaders in the field, Alberto Cairo, author of “The Functional Art.” This kind of course represents a major challenge for universities, because their monopoly on expertise and certification is eroding. Just as occurred in the news business, competitors are emerging who are offering attractive alternatives.