The Philadelphia Inquirer is a public benefit corporation owned by the nonprofit Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Together, we're at the center of a critical mission to create a lasting future for ambitious, engaging, and useful local journalism. We're doing this, in part, by deepening our connection with the communities we serve. Our integrated digital and print platforms are the Philadelphia region's largest media network. We're passionate about building a sustainable model for indispensable local journalism, and we take pride in finding diverse, dynamic, and talented individuals to help push our team forward.
Journalism Student Job Description - Mapping News Project
Dates
Start Date: July 7, 2021 or later
End Date: April 30, 2022
Description
The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with the Brown Institute at Columbia Journalism School are hiring students to assist on a project titled 'Developing machine learning applications that operationalize DEI best practices in local newsrooms'. The project includes producing
open-source methods and automated tools for news organizations to extract geographic data from news coverage for analysis and future product development, and builds upon existing work by the partnership.
The student will work under the supervision of members from the Philadelphia Inquirer and Brown Institute at Columbia Journalism School and alongside a team of other researchers. The goal of the project is to produce a well documented, open source toolset that any local newsroom with an API or access to machine-readable content can use.
The student will work on phase one of the project, constructing a training set of tagged data to be used in future phases of the project, as well as assist with community and stakeholder engagement efforts, produce written progress updates, and create documentation surrounding the project and its implementation.
Deliverables
The student will work among a team of researchers to produce a tagged training set of location data for the project. The student is expected to attend weekly meetings with the team and supervisors to review progress throughout the project.
The key deliverable is a set of manually tagged locations found in local news stories from The Philadelphia Inquirer. Locations will be identified, tagged, and delivered in a format determined by the supervisor and larger research team.
In addition to producing training data, the student will work with the team on their community and stakeholder engagement efforts. They will also couple this work with documentation about the progress of the project and its wider implementation outside the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Resources Required
All work on the project will be conducted off-site on personal equipment. Data will be provided by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Computational resources, including servers, storage, and video meetings will be provided by The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Brown Institute at Columbia Journalism School.
Final product
The student (and team) will deliver a training set in a format supported (and requested) by the larger research team. The student will also submit written documents about the project and its community engagement efforts. No technical expertise is required to deliver this final product.
Pay Rate- $25.00/Hour
* We know not everyone reading this will fit exactly what we've described. We encourage everyone to apply who shares our passion for indispensable journalism and our drive to create a sustainable business model to support it. As an equal opportunity employer, The Inquirer is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive culture, and we especially encourage members of underrepresented communities to submit an application, including women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and people with special needs*
We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.
Other details
- Pay Type Hourly
- Job Start Date Monday, August 16, 2021
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What We Do
Since 1829, The Philadelphia Inquirer has been “asking on behalf of the people” by providing essential journalism for the diverse communities of the Philadelphia region. The Inquirer, a for-profit public benefit corporation owned by the non-profit Lenfest Institute, produces Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism that changes lives and leads to lasting reforms. Its multiple brand platforms — including newspapers, Inquirer.com, e-Editions, apps, newsletters, and live events — reach a growing audience of more than 10 million people a month.
“In a free state, there should always be an inquirer asking on behalf of the people: Why? Why? Why?” — John Norvell, Inquirer co-founder
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