Date journalism boot camp workshop opens in Accra

A three-day Data Journalism Boot Camp aims at empowering journalists to learn how to use government and other public data to build data visualization has opened in Accra on Wednesday.

The workshop is designed to revolutionize the way the media researches and publishes news through data mining, extraction and analytic skills.

It has brought together journalists, website developers and creative designers who are put into working groups to build news driven mobile applications and civic engagement websites to augment the traditional news reportage.

Mr. Justin Arenstein, a resource person, said “Participants will learn how to find, extract and analyse public data using powerful forensic tools to tell better informed stories.

He said the best projects would win ,000.00 as seed grants, to turn prototypes into real newsroom products.

Meanwhile, the Government of Ghana has commenced the Ghana Open Data Initiative (GODI) to make Government data available to citizens for re-use.

The initiative according to authorities would make government more transparent, improve efficiency and spark-off innovation from the demand side for applications to be developed to better serve the citizenry.

Dr. Nii Quaynor, Board Chairman of the National Information Technology Agency (NITA), was confident that with the type of capacity being giving to the media, it would help journalists to better inform and educate the citizenry.

Mr. Seth Joseph Bokpe, a participant, told the Ghana News Agency that the training would empower him to research more to enrich his reportage.

The workshop is in collaboration with the GODI through the NITA, the World Bank Institute, the African Media Initiative and Google.

Other partners include Open Knowledge Foundation, Upande, World Wide Web Foundation, Centre for Investigative Reporting and International Centre for Journalists.