16 Students Receive Travel Fellowships to Attend Computer Reporting Conference in Denver

UC Berkeley journalism students spent three days last week networking in Denver, discussing investigative reporting techniques and learning new programming languages at the annual NICAR conference.

The National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting is a gathering organized by the Investigative Reporters and Editors organization. This year, 16 J-School students and lecturers Allison McCartney and Peter Aldhous were among a record number of NICAR attendees.

“Though NICAR has been around since 1989, the record attendance at conferences recently demonstrates the explosion in interest in data journalism,” said J-School New Media lecturer Jeremy Rue.

“Data journalism is a branch of investigative journalism,” Rue continued. “It’s about diving deep into public records, databases and other quantitative information to uncover hidden stories. This form of watchdog journalism is crucial to democracy, and all signs show the public craves this type of work.”

At the conference, students met with industry leaders, participated in hands-on workshops and sat in on panel discussions.

New Media students Nicole West (’16) and Naomi Nishihara (’16) spent a full day learning the programming language Python. But West’s favorite part of NICAR was a breakfast where students were matched with mentors. West was paired with a data reporter from ProPublica, Ryann Grochowski Jones.

“It was nice to talk to her about her career path after graduate school and how she got to ProPublica,” West said. “If I ever have any questions or need help on anything, I can email her. She was really cool.”

Grochowski Jones said this was her third time serving as a mentor at the NICAR conference.

“I became a mentor because I have had several mentors from the NICAR community myself and I owe much of my career to them,” Grochowski Jones wrote in an email. “I wanted to give back.”

Gabriel Sanchez (’16), who attended the conference to sharpen his investigative reporting skills, said he particularly enjoyed a session called “Election: Dark Money,” focused on campaign finance.

“I thought that was really helpful in the work that I do,” Sanchez said.

Noelia Gonzalez (’16) hoped to get a better sense of what was possible in reporting with data.

One of her favorite sessions explored the difference between correlation and causation. As a health reporter, Gonzalez found the session valuable: “You can find correlation in everything,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s correct.”

Other second-year students attending the conference included Theodore Andersen, Melissa Bosworth, Fan Fei, Phil James, Sasha Lekach, Jeremy CF Lin, Brett Murphy, Harriet Rowan, Nadine Sebai, Lakshmi Sarah, Shaina Shealy, and Jieqian Zhang.

The J-School has been sending students to the conference and subsidizing their costs through tax-deductible private gifts to its travel fund since 2014. This year, each of the students who attended the conference received a $500 stipend that was provided, in part, by a grant from the Yellow Chair Foundation.

“With increasing costs of education, we understand it’s difficult for students to prioritize attending conferences to network with industry leaders. To help alleviate some of that pressure, the School is subsidizing part of the costs through a generous grant,” Rue said.

By Mara Van Ells (’16)