Scholarship Opportunity for Data Journalists

Investintech.com, Inc is the developer of award-winning and industry-leading PDF conversion, creation, and editing solutions. They recently announced their annual data journalism scholarship which is in collaboration with the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ)

If you're an amateur journalist looking to develop your data journalist skill, this may be a great time to start. The deadline for the application is 1st April 2021. While applicants need not have an academic background in journalism, they must show evidence of their journalism skills and interest. Interested CBU students can get their articles published at The Caper Times for their application. Students can email their submissions at ct_editorinchief@cbu.ca. However, students can also submit published blog posts or even class assignments with their scholarship applications.

The guidelines for the submissions are as follows:

"Work must have been produced within one calendar year of the scholarship closing date.

• Individual work is preferred. If the submitted item is produced as part of a team of two or more, the applicant must submit their own proof of work.

• Previous winners are not eligible to apply.

The submission must include:

• An example of a work of journalism that shows the application of data skills (e.g. use of spreadsheets, web scraping, use of mapping tool).

• An explanation of what you did and how you did it, including the resources you used. For submissions that were part of a group project, applicants must explain their role, the skills they used in fulfilling that role, and the specific parts of the story, or stories, that their contribution influenced.

• An idea for a project you would like to work on, particularly if you had more data journalism skills. Include a link to a dataset that shows why the story is worth pursuing, and a link to a story you aspire to create or one that inspires you as a journalist.

• A letter of support from an instructor or editor."

CBU Students interested in applying can contact ct_editorinchief@cbu.ca for the support letter from the editor if they are applying for the scholarship with a submission at the Caper Times.

The submission should have at least 500 words and should demonstrate the effective use of data, visualizations, and/or medium being used.

The winning candidate would be awarded:

• $1,000.00 CAD

• Free one-year membership with the CAJ

• One free pass to the annual CAJ national conference

Interested candidates can find more details about the scholarship here and can contact scholarships@investintech.com regarding further queries.