The Great NICAR Scavenger Hunt

Brought to you by the Data Journalism Teachers' Club

Welcome to NICAR! And thanks for participating in the first annual #nicarscavengerhunt. You’ll receive your t-shirt on Friday (they’re a bit delayed in printing 😢), but the scavenger hunt begins now!!!! No t-shirt? No problem! You can still participate in the fun!

Submit Your Responses

What is the NICAR Scavenger hunt?

You’ll be joining students from schools across the country to interview experienced journalists about concepts you’re learning in your data journalism classes! Why participate? Because you’ll get to talk to some great journalists about their stories and you’ll get access to notes from everyone else’s interviews to learn from!

How to participate:

  1. 💡 Pick a topic:
    Talk to your professor and pick a concept you’ve learned about in class to hunt for (that’s what will go on the front of your shirt) Example concepts: statistical models, data FOIAs, p-values, pivot tables, census data, ethical quandaries, linear regressions, etc…

  2. 🗣️ Conduct an interview:
    Conduct at least one interview that is a minimum of 10-15 minutes with a journalist who has an example story that involves your topic. If that journalist has already given an interview to a scavenger hunter, you must find someone else! Make sure to ask about a specific story, including:
    • How that journalist used your topic in a specific story
    • How they came up with the idea for that story
    Your interview writeup will be shared with other scavenger hunters and professors, so if a journalist asks you to keep something off the record, don’t include it in your writeup.

  3. ✏️ Submit the form!
    Submitting a form means you’ll get access to notes from everyone else’s interviews. That’s a huge bank of example stories and concepts for you to learn and gain inspiration from, as well as behind-the-scenes information about where the idea came from.

If you post about the scavenger hunt on social, feel free to use #nicarscavengerhunt. Bonus points for a selfie with your interviewee 😬 (only if they’re up for it of course). Happy Hunting!

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

If any questions or concerns should arise, please don't hesitate to email me at dhrumil.mehta@columbia.edu. For more information about the organization running the scavenger hunt, visit Data Journalism Teachers Club. And a special thanks to the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and OpenNews for sponsoring the t-shirts.