News

2017 Knight International Award Winners Chronicle the Human Toll of Extremism

Journalists from Pakistan and Syria whose work exposed extremism and inhumanity in their countries are winners of the 2017 Knight International Journalism Award, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) announced.

New ICFJ Knight Fellows Aim to Reinvent Health, Gender and Development Storytelling in India

How do you use the latest digital technologies to improve storytelling on health, gender and development issues? Just ask ICFJ’s four new Knight Fellows, who are leading the charge. They will offer their storytelling expertise, multimedia assistance and data skills to help journalists at two of the country’s most widely read news organizations.

How U.S Publishers Are Using a New App to Reach Mobile Users More Affordably

Now that the majority of Americans access news on their mobile devices, U.S. newsrooms must grab attention on those devices--or risk irrelevance. But developing and maintaining effective mobile apps from scratch is often too expensive for small publishers.

InnovateAFRICA: Digital Fact-checking and Watchdog Projects Win $1 Million

A pan-African fact-checking network, citizen science in Durban shantytowns and a graphic journalism hub are among the latest winners of seed grants from innovateAFRICA, the continent’s largest fund for digital journalism experimentation.

The 22 winning digital projects will receive $1 million in funding and technology support from innovateAFRICA, which is managed by Code for Africa as part of ICFJ's wider data journalism initiative in the region.

16 Free Digital Tools Created by ICFJ Knight Fellows That Any Newsroom Can Use

The ICFJ Knight Fellows are global media innovators who foster news innovation and experimentation to deepen coverage, expand news delivery and better engage citizens. As part of their work, they’ve created tools that they are eager to share with journalists worldwide.

Two ICFJ Knight Fellows, Jorge Luis Sierra and Shaheryar Popalzai, are speaking at the 2017 NICAR conference in Jacksonville, Florida, on March 2-5.

‘Salama’ App Helps to Keep Journalists Safe

From Mexico to Iraq to the United States, journalists around the world face severe threats to their physical safety and digital security every day. For this reason, I created a free risk assessment web application, called Salama, that’s designed especially for journalists and bloggers to help keep them safe on the job.

Journalists from more than 130 news organizations in Latin America, the U.S., Africa and the Middle East have conducted their first-ever risk assessment using Salama.

Why publishing more open data isn’t enough to empower citizens

When I attended the International Open Data Conference last October in Madrid, there was plenty of talk about whether open data has failed to live up to its promise. Has open data really increased transparency, improved government efficiency, brought about world peace, ended world hunger?

ICFJ Knight Fellow Janine Warner: Perfectionism is the enemy of news startups

Frustrated by the constraints of traditional media, a growing number of journalists are interested in launching their own news startups, says Janine Warner, an ICFJ Knight Fellow who helps Latin American news entrepreneurs strengthen their business models. Too often, she says, when aspiring entrepreneurs come up with a great idea, two obstacles trip them up.

One is perfectionism. “If you’re an entrepreneur, waiting until everything is perfect is a problem,” Warner said in a recent interview with Chilean website Puroperiodismo.

The basics of phishing attacks: What journalists need to know to stay safe

Unless they cover technology, most journalists probably could not explain exactly how a cyberattack happens.

What We Learned Training South Africa's New Generation of Data Journalists

When Code for South Africa launched Africa’s first data journalism academy in February this year, we were trying to address a problem facing local newsrooms. We saw that South African newsrooms lacked the internal technical skills to start wrangling datasets and using them to find stories or to complement investigations.