Photo: Meta.mk
A three-day training on data journalism and visualization was held in Public Room in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, from 14 to 16 December. The training in English was attended by 14 young people, primarily students and journalists from all over North Macedonia.
The training was conducted by Derek Willis, lecturer at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland; Goran Rizaov, Head of the Program “Media for Democracy” at the Metamorphosis Foundation; and Bojan Blazhevski, Editor-in-Chief of Meta News Agency.
It is the first training in a series of three such events, which the Metamorphosis Foundation is conducting in cooperation with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) from the United States.
In three days, a series of lectures were held, and the participants also did practical exercises. The topics covered were: What is data and what types of data there are, how to find the data, what are the most used online sources of datasets in North Macedonia, and how to glean the data from tables and how to perform their analysis.
Special training on the ethical use of artificial intelligence in journalism was also conducted, and it was also shown how artificial intelligence can help clean up and structure the data for visualizations.
The participants were divided into four teams, tasked with preparing a visualization from the selected data on a specific topic and presenting the results.
The young people in the three-day training received certificates for the acquired skills, issued by the International Center For Journalists and the Metamorphosis Foundation.
The three workshops that will be held from December to May, include eminent journalists from the United States, together with journalists from the media under the umbrella of the Metamorphosis Foundation.
The best six participants from the three workshops will have the opportunity for a one-month paid internship in one of the three media organizations of the Metamorphosis Foundation next summer. The top three will go on a week-long study visit to the United States with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) in Washington.
All the planned activities are part of the “Journalism For the New Generation” project, which the Metamorphosis Foundation is implementing in partnership with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), with the support of the US Embassy in Skopje, from September 2023 to July 2024.
