Grants fund investigative journalism [Worldwide]

Investigative journalists can apply for a reporting grant.

The grants, sponsored by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, are intended to support investigative projects that break new ground and expose wrongdoing – such as corruption, malfeasance or misuse of power – in the public and private sectors.

The maximum award is US$10,000, which should cover out-of-pocket expenses such as travel costs, document collection and equipment rental. The first half of the grant is given once an application is approved and the second half is paid when the project is complete.

Proposals must come from U.S.-based reporters or international journalists whose stories have a U.S. angle, involving American citizens, government or businesses. Stories must be published in English.

Proposals must be submitted in English and include a detailed budget.

The deadline to apply is Sept. 25.

For more information, click here.

Travel scholarship to Russia accepting applications [Germany, Poland]

Print, online, photo and radio journalists can apply for a trip to Russia.

The Foundation for German-Polish Cooperation will fund a research trip to Moscow for five German and five Polish journalists Nov. 6 to 11.

The selected journalists will meet with representatives from civil society, culture, business and politics to discuss current Russia policy and its relationship to the past.

The program will be conducted in English. Russian skills are an advantage, but not required. 

There is a participation fee of EUR80 for freelance journalists and EUR180 for staff journalists from Germany, and PLN300 for freelance journalists and PLN700 for staff journalists from Poland.

The deadline to apply is Sept. 8.

For more information (in German), click here.

Free seminar focuses on technology, advertising for digital media [Brazil]

Journalists, journalism students and professors are invited to attend this event in São Paulo.

The Brazilian chapter of the Online News Association (ONA) is organizing "Journalism, technology, advertising: the foundation of digital media" on July 19 in São Paulo.

The debate will focus on how technology and advertising can respond to new challenges in building a more transparent, manageable and accountable environment.

The speakers are Robin Kwong, editor of special projects for the Financial Times (in London via video call); Marco Túlio Pires, leader of Google News Lab in Brazil; Marcelo De Paulo, former director of iBest, Unibanco, 9ine and Yahoo, and consultant for the piauí magazine.

The event is free.

For more information (in Portuguese), click here.

Bursary for Global Investigative Journalism Conference available [South Africa]

Undergraduate seniors, honors and master’s students in journalism can apply for a scholarship to attend this conference.

The Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC) will take place Nov. 16 to 19 in Johannesburg, co-hosted by the Global Investigative Journalism Network and the Wits University Journalism Program. The event will feature more than 100 panel discussions, workshops and networking sessions. 

Wits Journalism will provide bursaries to South African students. The bursaries will cover travel costs to the conference, hotel accommodation, meals, conference fees and ground transportation.

The deadline to apply is Aug. 4.

For more information, click here.

Google News puts fact-checking first in latest redesign

By Joseph Lichterman, Nieman Lab 

Google on Tuesday launched a redesigned desktop version of Google News that introduces a more streamlined design, highlights fact checking and offers users additional personalization.

Google News’ desktop site is now broken into three main sections: Headlines, which features the day’s top news stories; Local, which allows users to follow news from certain locations; and For You, which contains specific topics a user has said they’re interested in. The redesign also introduces a card-based interface that is less cluttered than the previous iteration of Google News. The new layout is meant to highlight publisher titles, article labels, and offers more prominence to video. Users can also expand the cards to show more coverage on a certain topic.

Google News product manager Anand Paka said users often found the previous version of Google News too cluttered and confusing.

“Our goal here was to make every frequent task and every user need smooth and frictionless so they are connected to the news and journalism, which is why they come to Google News — to read the news and find out what’s going on,” Paka said in an interview. “To give them that multitude of facts, voices, and perspectives, you want the UI to disappear and not be a sense of overload or cognitive load on them but just be transparent.”

Google News is also introducing a fact-check widget on the right side of its homepage that more prominently displays stories from fact-checking sites such as PolitiFact and Snopes. (Though you’ll probably have to scroll a bit to reach it.) For now, the Fact Check addition is only available in the United States, but Google says it plans to roll it out more widely soon.

While Facebook has borne the brunt of controversy around fake news in the wake of the 2016 election, Google has also come under repeated scrutiny for promoting dubious stories in search and news results.

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Last year, Google News introduced a fact-checking label for stories, and in April it began to showcase fact-checking sites in search and news results. (It’s important to note also that Google itself isn’t doing the fact-checking — it’s only highlighting nonpartisan sites, which limits the scope of what it can cover.) In April, it also launched “Project Owl,” a series of initiatives to try and promote more accurate content across its services.

This Google News redesign, however, is more focused on the user interfaces, Paka said.

“Because it’s a redesign, it’s more about the surface-type touches to the user for the most part,” he said. “Under the hood, we continue to use and build upon all the best practices both from search and as well as from Google News…We take an open-web philosophy. As long as a publisher is actively publishing news content, they are included in News and we maintain that policy bar for the people who show up in Google News. Once you have these quality sources within our index, then it’s about ranking and picking the best article to show at any given time.”

Still, the redesign aims to also give users more control of the coverage they see in Google News. The new interface makes it easier for users to manage the topics they want to follow. It also allows users to more explicitly prioritize or eliminate results from specific outlets.

Fo now, the redesign is primarily focused on the desktop site. Some features, such as the card-based interface, are already available on mobile, and Paka said he expects more changes to eventually come to mobile.

“We’re always trying to get all of these together, a consistent experience, but usually one of them [is] one step [ahead] of the other because we are trying to advance them in lockstep,” he said. “In this case, it’s a desktop launch. We expect mobile to converge on this over the short to medium term.”

This article first appeared on Nieman Lab and is republished with permission. 

Main image CC-licensed by Flickr via Spencer E Holtaway