Apply to be IRE’s Google Fellow next summer!

Are you a college journalism student who enjoys holding government officials accountable, scouring public records or working with data? If so, consider spending your summer at IRE through the Google News Lab Fellowship.

Eight participating organizations in the U.S. select students who will spend ten weeks working on projects focused on data journalism, online free expression, building news apps, and rethinking the business of journalism. Each student receives a $8,500 stipend and $1,000 travel fund. Be sure to apply by Dec. 15. 

IRE and NICAR are both based out of the University of Missouri. We’re a small crew – but there’s no limit to the scope and impact of the work you can do here.

Need proof? We asked our 2015 Google Fellow, Jessica Park, to describe her summer:

I arrived at Investigative Reporters & Editors last summer after graduating with a master’s degree in data journalism from Stanford University. Working at IRE was a bit like coming home; I spent four years of my college career at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

The IRE office isn’t that big, but that’s what made it so great. I was able to work hands-on with both of my bosses, and through this experience I was able to hone a lot of the skills I’d learned at Stanford. Before joining IRE, I was a bit nervous about not having enough computer skills, but NICAR Database Library Director Liz Lucas helped ease my anxiety.

For NICAR, I worked on the boating accidents and dam databases and used mySQL to find pertinent information journalists that would want to know in order to do timely stories. I came up with queries to match different data sets and created tweets to send out through the IRE/NICAR Twitter handle to let people know that these datasets were available.

I also worked with Sarah Hutchins, IRE’s web editor, on two big projects. The first helped journalists find the best interactive data journalism tools to enhance their stories. Through this project, I was able to talk with a lot of great data scientists at different organizations to get a better idea of which tools were available and the steps required to create a useful infographic.

I was also able to help Sarah create a map of the impact IRE has around the world. For those of you who don’t know, IRE is kind of a big deal in the journalism world. This gave me an opportunity to take a deep dive into mapping, which I had very limited skills in prior to my fellowship.

The working environment at IRE is great and the people you work with are all so friendly that you can’t help but enjoy your summer. The internship allowed me to hone skills I already had and learn new ones. I also met some amazing people along the way, and that was pretty much the cherry on top of my summer back at Mizzou.

If you have questions about IRE’s portion of the fellowship, contact Liz Lucas at liz@ire.org.