Not every millennial is digital-minded, emphasized Anika Anand, Chalkbeat’s director of engagement. In a company staffed by employees mostly 30 and younger, many have no interest in digital storytelling.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not about age,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s about having fresh perspectives and talking to those people as often as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The panelists talked about their innovative approaches to journalism and shared the projects that won them recognition as either an MJ Bear Fellow or an AP-Google Scholar.<\/p>\n
Here is more information about the panelists and their projects:<\/p>\n Visualizing stories with data A 2014 MJ Bear Fellow, Williams ventured into coding when he landed a grant to teach himself web design and redo San Francisco State University\u2019s journalism website, which used a CMS so old that it couldn\u2019t support YouTube videos. At The New York Times Student Journalism Institute, Aron Pilhofer introduced him to the concept of using coding for reporting.<\/p>\n For his first project for the Center for Investigative Reporting, Williams collaborated with others to create an interactive map about the increase in painkiller prescriptions<\/a> for veterans after Sept. 11. The project earned the organization its first George Foster Peabody Award.<\/p>\n Williams attributes the success of the project to its mixture of showcasing data and using various storytelling tools.<\/p>\n \u201cJust showing the data doesn\u2019t tell a story in and of itself,\u201d he said. \u201cYou need the human element; you need the other parts.\u201d<\/p>\n Following the project\u2019s publication, a U.S. House committee held a hearing about the issue, and more people have been focusing on these issues in their communities, Williams said.<\/p>\n Right now, Williams is working to build tools to help others process data about California campaign finances. The information is already online but is difficult to navigate and tedious to obtain, Williams said. He\u2019s breaking up the information and repackaging it so it\u2019s contained and shareable.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole idea is, take this raw data and make sense of it so that if you\u2019re a data journalist who wants to do campaign finance analysis in California, we\u2019ve done all the hard work for you,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve cleaned up all the tables; we\u2019ve documented it. All you have to do is find the candidate you\u2019re looking at or the organization you\u2019re looking for and start doing your analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n He said that when thinking about data visualization, maps and other interactive journalism tools, he thinks sometimes its purpose gets forgotten.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not doing it just because the technology is cool,\u201d he said. \u201cReally, we\u2019re trying to help people do better journalism, or ourselves to do better journalism, and to inform the public.\u201d<\/p>\n Collecting data on impacts of reporting<\/strong><\/p>\n As a reporter in New York for GothamSchools, now part of Chalkbeat, Anand saw a lot of opportunities to better connect with the blog\u2019s audience.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to make a point to go out into the community and listen to what people want,\u201d said Anand, a 2014 MJ Bear Fellow.<\/p>\n She talked about the importance of these opportunities with her boss, who named her the director of engagement.<\/p>\n She manages MORI (Measures of Our Reporting\u2019s Influence), a program that enables users to tag stories to track specific metadata and enables them to input qualitative impacts of reporting.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s definitely been a good experience for our reporters to see things that are happening as results of their stories and think about how their work has influenced those different things that are happening,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Reporters also have become more aware of the types of stories they\u2019re writing since making tagging metadata mandatory, she added.<\/p>\n Anand hopes the next version of MORI, which is being developed, will enable users to create a dashboard of analytics that are customized to specific tracking measures.<\/p>\n![\"Aaron](\"http:\/\/testing.journalists.org\/wp-content\/sites\/4\/2014\/09\/Williams-Aaron-12099.png\")
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