Applications call for the 2020 Center for Health Journalism Data Fellowship at the University of Southern California in the United States of America. The 2020 Center for Health Journalism Data Fellowship is for skilled journalists who want to learn to mine data sources to reveal key insights essential to high-impact journalism.

Summary

The 2020 Center for Health Journalism Data Fellowship at the University of Southern California offers professional reporters an opportunity to learn to acquire, analyze and produce visualizations of data that can help their audiences understand key health and child welfare developments. Fellows can beat reporters focused on health, education, or children’s issues or general assignment reporters with a demonstrated interest in reporting on these themes.

Each Fellow will have to propose an ambitious investigative or explanatory reporting project to undertake in the six months following the training. In addition to that, fellows will receive grants of $2,000 to support reporting and data acquisition costs. Furthermore, for six months, Fellows receive guidance from expert data journalism mentors as they complete ambitious explanatory or investigative Fellowship projects built around data – reporting that impacts policy and spurs new community discussions.

Benefits 

• Knowledge and Skills: Fellows will receive intensive training in data acquisition, cleansing, analysis, and visualization techniques from some of the best data journalists in the country. Fellows will gain insights into how to document health and demographic trends in their local communities.
• Financial Support and Mentoring: Fellows will receive grants of $2,000-$10,00 to use for reporting and data acquisition costs. Veteran data journalists will provide one-on-one mentoring for six months while Fellows work on substantive investigative or explanatory reporting projects. Up to three Data Fellows from California may receive supplemental grants of $1,000 to $2,000 for community engagement, as well as specialized mentoring on community engagement.

Eligibility

Candidates must have the following qualifications to be eligible for the 2020 Center for Health Journalism Data Fellowship at the University of Southern California

• Applicants must demonstrate a minimal skill level in Excel or take an online course on Excel. Since the Fellowship is highly interactive, Fellows must have access to a computer and pre-load it with the Excel and Tableau software that will be used during the training. (If you don’t already have this software, advice about how to get it for free are available).
• They prefer that applicants have a minimum of three years of professional experience; many Fellows have decades.
• Journalists writing for ethnic media are strongly encouraged to apply.
• Proposals for collaborative projects between mainstream and ethnic news outlets receive preference, as do projects produced for co-publication or co-broadcast in both mainstream and ethnic news outlets.
• Freelancers who apply should earn the majority of their income from journalism. Students and interns are ineligible.

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