This Friday, we’re hosting the first of a number of ongoing free trainings focused on uncovering how COVID-19 is impacting communities around the United States.
We’re looking at the impacts of the pandemic from a broad array of angles, ranging from shortcomings in even measuring the full cost of the crisis to how AI is deciding who is and isn’t receiving benefits. We’ll also be discussing the results of community surveys conducted by Outlier Media that show how COVID-19 has exacerbated existing challenges even as it creates new ones — and what kind of information communities need right now to survive.
The COVID Public Info project will also be releasing original data and document sets to help you report on these issues, as well as records request language you can use to get information from local and state government.
Join us for the first of these sessions Friday at 3:00 pm Eastern as we’ll discuss basic requesting strategies to uncover important stories in your community, and register for this newsletter to get updates on upcoming trainings and resources.
Interested in getting more involved and helping dig through local data that ties into larger investigations with a national network of peers? Get in touch.
COVID Public Info is a non-profit news collaboration between Outlier Media, the MuckRock Foundation, Matt Kiefer and Garance Burke, and it is made possible through the support of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University.
Who is this for? We’re primarily focused on serving local and regional newsrooms, but we’ll make our trainings available online for everyone. If you work at an organization doing research you think might be of interest to those reporting on COVID-19, though, please get in touch, and we’d love to discuss connecting you.
Who is behind this? This project is a partnership between Outlier Media, the MuckRock Foundation, and Garance Burke and Matt Kiefer, two John S. Knight Journalism Fellows at Stanford. We also have a number of local and regional reporting partners who are contributing time, data, and expertise — you can read the first story to result from this partnership at KQED . The project is financially supported by the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford .
Header image is a photo of MuckRock’s old office at the Boston Globe, taken by the author.
