Mile
Zero

How do we level up data journalists? In a few months, we'll have a new digital/data intern at the Times, and so I've been asking myself this question quite a bit, especially in light of our team's efforts to recruit diverse candidates. There are a lot of students and young journalists out there with a little bit of training, but no idea where to go from there: how do we get them across the gap to where they're capable of working on a newsroom development team? There's a catch-22 at work here: it's especially tough for aspiring news devs to get a job without experience, but they can't get experience without the job.

One strategy I've often heard is that young people should attend industry conferences as a way to learn from experienced journalists and build connections. Myself, I'm skeptical of this. Conferences have never really been a part of my professional life. We didn't go to them at CQ, and I never got a chance to go to GDC when I worked in the game industry. After I was hired at the paper, I got to go to SND2015 and Write the Docs, and this year I'm heading to NICAR, SRCCON, and (possibly) CascadiaJS. It's possible I really hate myself.

Visiting conferences is rewarding, but it's also exhausting, expensive, and a huge time-sink. And while host organizations often work to mitigate that through scholarships and grants to disadvantaged communities, it's still a big ask for neophytes. Even if I weren't skeptical of the benefits conferences actually bring, I think it's hard to argue that we don't need better, more accessible solutions.

The way I see it, there are three things that you get out of a conference as a young person:

1. Mentorship
2. Training
3. Exposure to developing industry trends

Of the three, the first is the hardest to duplicate, and yet it's the most crucial. Networks are powerful in this industry, and you can practically watch them develop before your eyes if you look closely: young people who catch a break early with the right people, and find themselves quickly elevated with opportunities to work on well-known teams, fill industry panels, and write insipid Nieman Lab think-pieces on the future of news. Then we all end up competing over hiring those same six people, which I don't really think is healthy.

Ironically, this is something I want to discuss with other newsrooms at the conferences this year, before I retreat into my Seattle cave for the rest of my natural life. But I'm also starting a personal initiative to make myself available for "remote mentorship," and asking other people to do so. If you're in news and would like to join, feel free to add yourself to the sheet, and I'll share it with students or other people who get in touch!