In Mediabistro’s latest So What Do You Do? interview, veteran broadcast journalist and Our America host Lisa Ling talks about her career and how her sister’s North Korea detention changed her outlook on traditional journalism.

“What happened with Laura has made me more defiant than ever about the need for solid journalism,” she said. “The fact that Laura was illegally apprehended and held for so long for wanting to report about the horrific things that are happening to North Korean refugees was just tragic. We need journalists to uncover truths. It’s never more important than now.”

The busy host, whose resume boasts The View and National Geographic’s Explorer, still tries to find time to contribute to Nightline, where she used to be a correspondent. “I think the fact that Nightline is doing so well is a testament to the fact that people are hungry for good, strong storytelling,” she said.

Read more at So What Do You Do, Lisa Ling, Host and Executive Producer of Our America?

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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