The why of source diversity and inclusive storytelling

Last year, I wrote a feature story for The Hechinger Report about the obstacles students of color face when trying to get into graduate school. I interviewed Black, Asian and Latino students, professors and education experts. When I wrote about the prevalence of skin cancer in Black and Latinos, I used real people and expert sources of color.

Bolster your digital safety: An anti-hacking, anti-doxxing workshop

Journalists in all newsrooms, especially women, LGTBQ+ and BIPOC, are dealing with unprecedented levels of online abuse that can take form in publishing of private information, impersonations, hacking and more.  In the ONA session, “Bolster Your Digital Safety: An Anti-Hacking, Anti-Doxxing Workshop,” Viktorya Vilk, program director for Digital Safety and Free Expression, PEN America and … Continued

Discovering how readers perceive photos and video

The main questions bouncing around my educator’s noggin for the last couple of decades have been about how visuals resonate with audiences — what draws a person’s attention, helps them to parse information, to understand and remember? My goal with this RJI project is to create practical materials to help small newsrooms and non-profit organizations … Continued

Looking for a subscription success story? Try Scandinavia’s Schibsted

Scandinavia online readers lead the world in paying for online news, with 26% on average in Nordic countries answering affirmatively to the 2020 Reuters Digital News Report question, “Have you paid for online news content?”  In Norway alone, the percentage of readers who pay for online news is 42%, up eight percentage points from 2019. … Continued

Mapping COVID-19 cases in Observable with Vega-Lite

Choropleth maps show how data varies across a geographic region, a visualization technique used often to present a wide variety of data, including economic data, election results and, more recently, the prevalence of COVID-19 cases and deaths. I recently created a choropleth map that pulls live county-level COVID-19 case data from the Missouri Department of … Continued

Going virtual: Tips for a rewarding remote summer internship

Replicating the everyday office interaction Since you no longer have the everyday opportunities for casual communication with your coworkers, building those relationships can be quite the challenge. Every type of communication must be self-initiated and might exist on different platforms depending on who you are aiming to work with. Slack, email, project management software, Zoom.  In … Continued