‘For Journalism’: News Developers Launch A Kickstarter To Raise Money To Teach Data Journalism For All

By Lauren Rabaino on January 28, 2013 5:00 AM

A new Kickstarter campaign kicked off this weekend with a goal of raising $32,000 to create educational tools for the “next generation of news-application developers.” If they reach their goal, these are the first eight courses they’ll teach:

Django, taught by Jeremy Bowers of The Washington Post
Information Management, taught by Christopher Groskopf of NPR
Ruby on Rails, taught by Jeff Larson of ProPublica
DevOps, taught by Jacqui Maher of The New York Times
Charting and Visualization, taught by Michelle Minkoff of The Associated Press
Responsive Design, taught by Ryan Pitts of The Spokesman Review
Mapping, taught by Ken Schwenke of The LA Times
Cybersecurity and Online Privacy, taught by Mike Tigas of The Spokesman Review

It’s a lofty goal and a huge commitment from each instructor, seeing as they each have day jobs at high-profile news organizations. The great Dave Stanton will be the ringleader of the group, overseeing day-to-day outreach and helping the instructors stay on goal.

The mission of this project is admirable, and would be one of the best educational resources out there for journalists. Each course contains an ebook, screencasts, code repositories and forums.

Pledging to their campaign comes with benefits:

$5+: You’ll get a Twitter shoutout
$20+: Access to one topic of your choosing
$100+: Access to seven topics of your choosing
$110+: Every course in the batch plus a t-shirt
$500+: Access to all materials for a team of 10
$10,000+: All university students/staff get access, plus help strategizing around integration

Donate here.