The University Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid will launch Spain’s first-ever masters degree on investigative reporting, data journalism and visualization this fall, and Google will  provide six scholarships that pay 80 percent of recipients’ tuition.

The new program is organized by the journalism school of the media group Unidad Editorial and the University Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid. I caught up  via e-mail with two people involved with the program: Marcos García Rey, investigative reporter and ICIJ member who will coordinate the master’s,  and Mar Cabra, a module coordinator in charge of the data journalism aspect.

Here are the highlights from our Q&A, which is include below:

• Data courses will teach students how to think about the paper trail, how to obtain data, and how to use statistics to draw basic conclusions
• Data courses will include basic analysis tools like Excel, SQL and web scraping
• Second semester will touch on how to choose the correct visualization to convey a story
• Reporting classes will be more traditional in nature, though students will be posting to the web from day 1
• They drew inspiration from IRE’s Eductaor’s Center, Columbia’s investigative program and personal experiences
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Move over, the AP Stylebook. A new handbook is in town and there’s a good chance it will become a newsroom must-have.

The Data Journalism Handbook launched this past weekend at the School of Data Journalism, based at the 2012 International Journalism Festival in Perugia. It is a one stop shop for reporters interested in learning about data journalism and includes a free, open sourced web version so anyone can access it.

“The book’s contributors are a who’s who of data journalism,” wrote Simon Rogers, a contributor to the handbook, in a post on the Guardian’s Datablog. “There are pieces by data journalists from the BBC, the Chicago Tribune, the Financial Times, Propublica and the New York Times. And that’s besides contributions from three of us at the Guardian.” Read more

There’s no dearth of ways for journalists to congratulate and recognize themselves with awards. Whether you’re a small local newspaper or the most-watched national news show, there exists a seemingly endless list of contests and prizes to celebrate everything from the best public service journalism (Pulitzer anyone?) down to the most-specific specialized reporting (Media Orthopaedic Reporting Excellence Awards?). But within that sphere of contest categories, there’s not really been a contest solely focused on data journalism.

Now there is: The Data Journalism Awards, which purports to be “the first international contest recognizing outstanding work in the field of data journalism worldwide.”

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When it comes to search, Google reigns supreme. Millions of searches are conducted on a daily basis, and that sort of data is valuable to marketers, business people, and journalists as well. We’ve all seen the annual Google Zeitgeist data visualizations which show lists like the most used search queries and the fastest rising celebrities. Earlier this year, Google released Google Correlate, a tool that can mine similar patterns in search data terms.

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The Global Editors Network, along with search engine titan Google, recently announced the creation of the Data Journalism Awards at this year’s News World Summit in Hong Kong. The awards will validate what is undoubtedly the future of modern journalism: the correlation of trends using data analysis.

The objectives set forth by GEN and Google for the inaugural event are simple:

• Award the editorial excellence of data journalism
• Contribute to set the standards of data journalism
• Promote data journalism among editors and media executives
• Enhance the collaboration between journalists, developers and designers

The partnership between GEN and Google for this event is a match made in heaven. GEN’s primary goal is to empower colleagues looking for the preservation of editorial quality when working with publishers, media owners and news suppliers. And when it comes to working with and presenting data, Google reigns supreme. This year alone, we’ve covered three great data management and visualization tools from Google: Google Refine, Google Public Data Explorer, and Google Chart Wizard.

Six prizes will be presented during the Data Journalism Awards ceremony, and each winner will receive $10,000. Awards will be granted by GEN and GEN partners, as well as an international jury of experts and editors. Categories for the awards include data-driven investigations, interactive data visualizations, and data-driven mobile or web applications or services. There will also be two sub-categories for national and international news organizations, as well as regional and hyperlocal media outlets.

The Data Journalism Awards will take place in Paris during the 2012 News World Summit on May 30, 2012, with awards being presented on June 1, 2012. A dedicated website for the awards will be launched in January 2012, but you can find out more information about the event by contacting Antoine Laurent, deputy director for the Global Editors Network.