CA journalists: $2-$3.5k reporting grant and data training!

Dear California Journalist,

In this era of newsroom layoffs, journalists can’t have too many skills. Data-savvy journalists are among the most sought after in newsrooms today. 

If you’ve  been  wanting to  improve  your data skills, we have an exciting opportunity for  you — the all-expenses-paid  Center  for Health Journalism’s 2018  California Data Fellowship, which comes with four days of interactive training, six months of mentoring and a $2,000 reporting grant. (One journalist will be eligible for a $3,500 grant to report on the health and welfare of children 5 and under in L.A. County.)

Our 15-year-old program  is known  nationally as  the pre-eminent training program for journalists on community health issues.  With the explosion of data sources now available to any journalist with a computer and a high-speed internet connection, we’re pleased to be able to offer our third health data-focused fellowship, underwritten by grants from the California Health Care Foundation and The California Endowment.

We’ll bring 10 competitively selected California journalists to Los Angeles at our expense from October 17-20; provide them with four days of intensive skills-based  training  in  data  acquisition, cleansing, analysis and visualization techniques; and then send them home with reporting grants to be used to work on an ambitious health-related reporting project. Two  of the nation’s most respected data journalists will lead the sessions — Paul Overberg, a data editor for the Wall St. Journal, and Stanford Professor Cheryl Phillips, former data innovation editor at the Seattle Times — with assistance from other top data journalists from around the country.  We’ll also bring your editor to L.A. for a day or two to take part in an Editor-Fellow Workshop.

Each applicant must be comfortable using Excel and propose an ambitious data-informed Fellowship project. Preference will be given for data reporting on health policy; mental health and substance abuse; healthcare costs and healthcare financing; the performance of California’s safety net; the patient experience; the healthcare workforce; healthcare coordination; the use of opioid drugs; end of life and palliative care; telemedicine and the use of technology in healthcare delivery; data transparency and the healthcare industry; maternity care; and cancer care. 

Want to know more? Check our website.

Note: The deadline for applying is August 24.  We require applicants to have a conversation in advance of applying with one of our  Senior Fellows. Email Martha Shirk at CAHealth@usc.edu well in advance to arrange.