Two of Canada’s premiere data journalists are coming to King’s in June to teach in the annual King’s summer data schools.
The Toronto Star’s Jim Rankin, whose ground-breaking data work revealed racial profiling by Toronto police and recently led to the Ontario government’s decision to ban random street checks of citizens by police, will co-lead the Summer School in Data Journalism. The one-week course begins June 20 and teaches the essential skills journalists and communicators need to use and understand data, and break big stories.
Rankin has won numerous journalism awards, including a “triple crown” of a National Newspaper Award, CAJ Award and Michener Award for his work on racial profiling.
William Wolfe-Wylie, a leading newsroom developer with CBC News, will co-lead the Summer School in Coding for Journalists. This course teaches the fundamentals of computer programming with the Python language, so journalists can perform tasks as diverse as scraping data from the Internet and connecting with the APIs of major social media services. The coding school begins on June 26. Wolfe-Wylie was responsible for much of the data work on the CBC’s investigation into missing and murdered aboriginal women, which recently won the Hillman prize for investigative reporting and the Canadian Screen Award for digital non-fiction.
There are still a few spots available in both schools, but they are going quickly. More information on both schools, including on rates and accommodations and how to sign up, can be found here. This is the 9th year the School of Journalism has offered the summer data school and the second year for the coding school. The schools attract working journalists and students from across Canada and many graduates have gone on to become leading data reporters with online, broadcast and print media.This year, the Summer School in Data Journalism is sponsored by the Toronto Star.
