Webinar on building structured journalism projects available [Worldwide]

When covering complex ongoing stories, such as outbreaks of violence and criminal trials, journalists typically have far more information than they can squeeze into the traditional linear storytelling format of most print, television and radio news. The result is often a series of stories, each repeating old information to help new audiences catch up.

Structured journalism is a form of storytelling that breaks out of this pattern. It uses the flexibility of online publishing to allow a story to continue evolving over months or even years. The key idea behind structured journalism is to cut information into small bits and allow audiences to decide how they want to consume it.

Approaches to structured journalism include building a database on a specific ongoing issue, such as The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning log of police shootings, or fleshing out traditional narrative stories with buttons and sidebars that provide optional deep dives on people, events and topics.

ICFJ Knight Fellow Ritvvij Parrikh is an experienced technologist who is helping newsrooms in India use structured journalism and other storytelling techniques to expand coverage of health, gender and development issues. During his Fellowship, Parrikh created the Proto Platform, a suite of tools to help journalists build their body of work around a specific theme or issue and engage readers with interactive quizzes, timelines and data visualizations. Parrikh co-leads PROTO, an impact startup that runs events, builds software and consults for civic media in India.

Recent projects that Parrikh has helped build include Land Conflict Watch, an interactive map of resource and ownership disputes happening throughout India, and Jal Jagran, a micro-site examining groundwater issues in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. Jal Jagran allows readers to compare the state’s 75 districts using evaluations of rainfall, forest cover, population and other factors influencing groundwater quality.

Journalists worldwide can join a webinar led by Parrikh on Tuesday, Oct. 30 that will delve into the growing practice of structured journalism, including:

Why newsrooms are experimenting with structured journalism;

The technology needed to launch such projects in your newsrooms;

Examples of structured journalism tools and storytelling templates.

The webinar, which is supported by the Dow Jones Foundation, will be offered in English here at 10 a.m. EDT. The webinar will also be broadcast via Facebook Live on the IJNet English Facebook page.

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