Three J-School Students Awarded Google News Lab Fellowships

Three second-year Berkeley journalism students have been awarded prestigious Google News Lab fellowships. The three–Fan Fei, Brett Murphy and Jieqian Zhang–are among eight winners in a nationwide competition that drew 1,800 applications.

Fan Fei will be at ProPublica; Brett Murphy at Investigative Reporters & Editors, and Jieqian Zhang at the Center for Investigative Reporting. Berkeley’s three fellows are the largest number selected from any single journalism program in the country.

The fellowships provide students with $8,500 stipends and $1,000 travel budgets for the program’s 10-week duration. Fellows begin their work with their host organizations in June.

Google sought students who want to expand their data storytelling skills and have strong academic records, evidence of engagement outside of school, and familiarity with computer programming languages like HTML and JavaScript.

Fei, who will be at ProPublica, a New York City-based nonprofit investigative news organization, described the fellowship as a “must apply” for anyone who, like her, is drawn to tech driven storytelling. She said she is eager to produce stories that make a difference.

Assistant Professor Richard “Koci” Hernandez, and lecturer Jeremy Rue, who run multimedia training at the J-School, were delighted to see three of their top students selected. “Fellows have opportunities to research and write stories, contribute to open-source data programs, and create timely data to accurately frame public debates about issues in the U.S. and the world,” said Hernandez.

Rue said the fellowships are an excellent way to give the students real world experience working at some of the top journalism organizations in the world, and praised the training they had received at the School. “These students were equipped with the requisite skill set by top instructors at the School, our data reporting instructor T. Christian Miller and our data visualization instructor Peter Aldhous,” said Rue. “Both had influential roles in training these students in core investigative and technical concepts that gave them the skills and knowledge to obtain such an accolade.”

“I am hoping to deal with big databases and work with a team of data journalists. What I have been doing most now is data visualization, and I really want to be a well-rounded graphics/data reporter, instead of just making things pretty, so this position will give me the chance to train my data reporting and analysis skills,” said Zhang.

Fei said she wanted to pitch and complete at least one news application project that would make an impact on society as well as improve her coding skills, while Murphy said he hoped to sharpen his data storytelling skills and help others within the IRE community.

The three fellows also expect to use their experiences after graduation.

Fei, who worked as a journalist in Shanghai before she joined the J-School, said her wish to “push the government to make policies that [promised] a stronger society with more democratic, sustainable and equitable growth” clashed with what she described as her country’s “inherent pragmatic and government limits” that make media advocacy in social affairs “romantic at best and disastrous at worst.” She said she saw the fellowship opportunity as a chance to get her closer to accomplishing what she had originally set out to do.

“I want to find a similar position after this fellowship, land a data related position and do something that matters,” said Fei.

Murphy said he saw the fellowship as one where he would be able to work with some of the best reporters in the business. “I hope that the position will give me a chance to get my name out there while learning to be self-sufficient in a newsroom and confident with big, aspirational projects,” he said.

By Agatha Kereere (’17)