Tom Meagher is a journalist based in New Jersey who covers criminal justice. He’s currently a senior editor at the Marshall Project. Since 2023, he's worked with the ICFJ News Corp Media Fellowship program to offer workshops on data journalism and mentor grantees.
Thought leaders from the International Center for Journalists, including ICFJ President Joyce Barnathan and two Knight International Journalism Fellows, headlined panel discussions on media innovation at the Guadalajara International Book Fair.
Sponsored by the Universidad de Guadalajara, the nine-day fair featured panel discussions and workshops aimed at tackling challenges faced by journalists around the world.
Barnathan gave two speeches during the Book Fair.
Not only will the upcoming DataBootCamp of Bolivia be the first event of its kind in Latin America, it will be the highest-altitude data journalism event the world has seen so far.
Journalists, programmers and designers will gather in the capital, La Paz, whose altitude reaches more than 11,800 feet (3,600 meters) above sea level.
We can’t do data journalism without reliable data. Accurate source data is just as important to data journalism as a reliable human source is to a reporter’s interview. We need a central repository where you can share the data that you have already proved to be reliable. Our answer to this need: OpenData Latinoamérica, which we are leading as ICFJ Knight International Journalism Fellows.
The concept behind HackDash is simple yet powerful: a web platform that brings people and ideas together and allows anyone to know the state of a project.
Irene Choge arrived at the data boot camp with little experience using spreadsheets. But the reporter for NTV in Kenya knew that learning how to use data could help her nail down an important story: why girls in rural school districts started performing badly as they reached adolescence.
There have been changes in Colombia since I arrived here 14 months ago. Peace talks between the oldest guerrilla group and the government are beginning. A free trade agreement with the United States is in place, and a country once known for drug trafficking, violence and kidnappings is now seen as one of Latin America’s most attractive places to invest.
In a different way, we are invested here, too.
I, too, have instigated changes.
For two days, the trainers became trainees, and it was fun. We stepped into the world of data visualization using the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). These population-based surveys provide reliable information on HIV, malaria, gender, family planning, maternal and child health, and nutrition in more than 90 countries.
On Monday, July 16, I launched Brazil’s first Hacks/Hackers chapter in Sao Paulo. The initiative has the support of ABRAJI (the Brazilian Investigative Journalism
Association), the local offices of the Open Knowledge Foundation and W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium).
