Google News Lab Fellowship with ABC News

Zoe Meers
5 March 2018

Google & data journalism

What is the Google News Lab?

  • Google News Lab was created in 2012 to look at how Google as technologists can make the lives of journalists easier.
  • Today they work with journalists around the world, providing data and information as well as training and support

How does the fellowship fit into the News Lab?

  • Google wants to support up-and-coming data-driven journalists
  • In 2012 they created a fellowship for uni students in US who were interested in data journalism
  • They were to work in a newsroom over their summer break and Google funded this effort
  • That has expanded to many countries around the world, including Australia

Google News Lab & ABC

Google News Lab in Australia

  • Last year, the Fellowship was with Fairfax; this year, it's with the ABC
  • In ABC, I work with the Interactive Digital team
  • I have been given a lot of freedom to work on my own projects
  • It's a cool opportunity to see what data journalism looks like in an award-winning newsroom with an incredible team of data journalists and web developers

What else?

  • You get to visit Google's HQ in Mountain View, CA
    • I spoke with various technologists at Google Earth, within the News Lab, & folks at Google Trends
  • The entire fellowship is ~10 weeks long - ideal for people who can take that time off and do some cool work that may be a bit different from what you normally work on
  • The position is funded

How did I get here?

  • I studied politics and statistics at uni
  • As part of my stats coursework, I learned R – in particular, the Tidyverse
  • I started experimenting with data visualization using ggplot2 in the Tidyverse
  • I moved onto D3.js and somehow got a job doing data visualization for the US Studies Centre at Sydney University
  • By the time I applied for this position, I had a small data viz portfolio
  • However… I'm still learning!

How can you apply for the Fellowship?

  • Applications are in November
  • Start working on developing a data viz portfolio now (if you don't have one already!)
    • It helps to be able to wrangle data
    • Statistics skills may be a good thing to have!
  • Learn how to communicate with data