On the evening of October 9, Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul unveiled her project “Democracy Fighters” at Casa Refugio Citlaltépetl in Mexico City. The launch event was picked up by news outlets in Mexico. Mexico City’s leading daily newspaper, La Jornada, posted a video, featuring an interview with Alejandra. “Defensores de la Democracia reúne el trabajo de
AuthorMark Hansen
“Democracy Fighters” Opens in Mexico City
On the evening of October 9, the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Article 19 gathered at Casa Refugio Citlaltépetl in Mexico City for the launch of Democracy Fighters, a digital archive that aggregates and preserves the works of journalists killed in Mexico. Since 2000, 111 journalists and media workers have been
A Science-Media Meetup
Last night, September 26, the Brown Institute hosted a group of journalism and science students for an evening of collaboration. We began with a panel led by Ros Donald, a PhD student at the Journalism School studying communication of climate change in Miami. Before beginning her PhD she was deputy editor of Carbon Brief, a
How we spent our summer
… if only it was just a little longer! But the end of summer means that the 2018-2019 cohort of Magic Grants are coming to a close — the teams have spent nearly a year on their projects and this summer was the time to wrap-up prototypes, refine code, and finish their reporting. While all
We’re Hiring!
The Institute at Columbia has two open positions — one for a creative technologist and one for a database aficionado. The first person will conduct original “creative research” that expands on traditional forms of journalism and storytelling. They should work easily with teams of journalists, other members of the Brown Institute, and the larger creative
NewCounts Is Hiring Two 2020 Census Reporters
NewsCounts, a Knight Foundation funded project, is seeking two Research Scholars to help report on the 2020 U.S. Census and its role in American democracy — from privacy in the decennial count, to its impacts on funding across the country, to how journalists find and tell stories in the numbers. NewsCounts was just featured on
Project NOAH
NOAH is a mapping application created by Disha Shetty, Maya Miller, Pankhuri Kumar and Ravie Lakshmanan, alumni of Columbia Journalism School, and Pietro Ceccato of SPACEBEL. It was made possible by a grant from the Brown Institute. This is a short report on NOAH’s development, and how can be used to uncover underreported stories on
Casting the Vote
By Alex Calderwood. Justin Hicks’ deep voice rolls through the microphone, sending blue light across the dark chamber like a waveform, illuminating on the table in front of me a half eaten piece of corn-on-the-cob and the faces of people who until a few minutes ago were strangers. The light reverbs-out with his voice, hinting
Thinking with Computation
“The purpose of computation is insight, not numbers.” Hamming, 1962. Fernando Perez, one of the creators of the Jupyter Notebook, began his talk at the Brown Institute Thursday with this quote from Richard Hamming’s book on algorithms. Fernando, or at least Jupyter, will be familiar to students in the Journalism School who have taken any