DW Akademie: Why did you apply for the Dataship?
Will: I applied to DW Akademie’s “Dataship - the Data Journalism Fellowship” after stumbling across the advertisement by chance after one of my Facebook friends shared a post about it. After reading the fellowship requirements, I thought to myself: "I'm a young journalist with some data journalism experience, so why not try?
What was your Dataship project about?
My project was about establishing an assessment of the number of road accidents in the DRC capital Kinshasa and to identify the most dangerous roads.
What were the most important lessons you learned?
I learned some new skills that I didn’t have before, specifically about how to manage large amounts of data, which tools to use when gathering data, how we could use HTML, CSS and JavaScript for data visualization, etc. I also got networking experience. I’ve been linked with other data journalists from all around the world. They all came together in Hamburg in September 2019 for the 11th Global Investigative Journalism Conference, the biggest gathering of its kind. I was able to build a network of data and investigative journalists from all around the world.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Aidila Razak, Malaysia
Aidila Razak worked with project partner Long Hui to visualize cronyism connections of the Malaysian government. Both are journalists with Malaysiakini, one of the most popular news websites in Malaysia. Aidila also joined the FoME Symposium "Rethinking Media Development" in Bonn in 2019 as a panelist.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Long Hui, Malaysia
Long Hui and his project partner Aidila Razak used data to investigate cronyism in Malaysia. When they started their project, the newly elected government had pledged to end cronyism and political appointments. But the practices of the previous ruling regime persisted, and less than two years later, they were back in power.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Odanga Madung, Kenya
Odanga channeled his passion for data collection into a project about air pollution in Nairobi — which is an enormous problem in Kenya’s capital. He worked with his project partner Samer Ahmed, who is also a Dataship fellow.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Samer Ahmed, Kenya
Samer Ahmed is an engineer. Together with his project partner Odanga Madung, he runs the data visualization start-up Odipo Dev. Respiratory illnesses are one of the leading causes of death in Kenya. The pair have used air pollution sensors to locate Nairobi's air pollution hotspots.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Will Cleas, D.R. Congo
Will's project demonstrated a very practical side of data journalism: He visualized road traffic accidents in Kinshasa, which have become an increasingly big problem in a city well known for its massive traffic jams. Even though he is the youngest of the fellows, he has already worked on a lot of data journalism projects for the online medium actualite.cd.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Roman Sverdan, Ukraine
Roman's Dataship project demonstrated how visualization of election data can contribute to better understanding electoral practices and improve election integrity in his home country Ukraine. He came up with a number of recommendations to improve accuracy in elections.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Mokthar Alibrahim, Syria
Mokthar is a native Syrian who is currently stationed in Jordan. He works for the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) and is skilled in traditional investigative journalism. Mokthar joined the Dataship fellowship to learn how to code and to improve his data journalism skill set.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Olivera Živkovic, Serbia
Olivera started her traineeship at Deutsche Welle in Autumn 2019. She and her project partner Tamara investigated violence against women in Serbia, analyzed available data and helped people share their stories.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Wan Zuhra, Indonesia
In her project, Wan investigated the statement: "How Jakarta Becomes Jakarta". She mapped the development of her home town and revealed the growth of Jakarta's population, as well as the history of its flooding.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Cristian Edel Weiss, Brazil
In Cristian's native country Brazil, over the past decade or so an average of four thousand schools have closed each year. Even more disturbingly, in his home state of Santa Catarina, a school closed every two days. Cristian investigated this phenomenon in his Dataship project while also interning at Deutsche Welle's Brazilian newsroom.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Claudia Baéz, Colombia
Claudia is an experienced data journalist in Colombia and specializes in data analysis and data mining for the media industry. She also runs an investigative website: Cuestión Pública. For the Dataship fellowship she worked with her project partner Juan Pablo Marín Díaz.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Juan Pablo Marín Díaz, Colombia
Juan Pablo, also from Colombia, worked with Claudia Baéz collecting data on gender gaps in the public sector in their home country and visualized it for a broader audience.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Rosario Marina, Argentina
Rosario trained in classical investigative journalism, which is highlighted through her work at Argentina's biggest newspaper "La Nación." During the fellowship she learned more about the technical side of data journalism and applied it to her investigation on why women are increasingly becoming drug dealers in Argentina.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Roxanne Joseph
Roxanne is currently working as an investigative wildlife journalist for Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism in Southern Africa. Her Dataship project focused on developing an animal tracker to shed light on illegal wildlife trade online.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Angelo Zehr, Zürich
Angelo Zehr is working as a data journalist for the Swiss National Television (SRF). He was part of the Dataship fellowship as a trainer.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Niko Kommenda, London
Niko Kommenda is a data journalist and developer for The Guardian. Among other topics, he trained the Dataship fellows in data visualization.
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Data journalism: Meet the Dataship fellows!
Nicolas Kayser-Bril, Berlin
Nicolas Kayser-Bril is a data journalist currently reporting for Algorithm Watch. For the Dataship fellowship, he acted as trainer and co-project manager.
How will the Dataship help you with your future work?
All these lessons I got from the Dataship are increasingly helping me to improve my way of practising data journalism. I can now work on some projects that I was finding complicated before.
What were your most memorable moments from the Dataship?
I liked the public speaking session. During our third meeting in January, we had the unique chance to present our projects an event organized by Hacks/Hackers, an international grassroots orgnization that focuses on technology and journalism. That was my first time making a speech in English before an audience.
What were the main challenges for you?
The main challenge was the language, first off! The application was calling for young journalists with good listening and speaking in English, and I was raised only with French as mother language. My level of English at the time was too low, but I really didn’t want to miss out on this opportunity. In the end, I decided to move forward with the application. If I wasn't selected because of my English that would be okay. The most important thing was to try rather than do nothing out of fear.
I also applied when my country was going through a difficult time. The internet had been shut down during the election process. To submit my application I had to travel towards the river that acts as the border between DRC and neighboring Republic of the Congo. From there, I was able to access the internet. A few months after I applied, the internet was reinstated in DRC, and one day, I received an email telling me that I had been shortlisted.