On Jan. 16, the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the Scripps Howard Fund launched a new open-source investigative journalism program. The classes aim to teach students how to collect digital data and turn it into stories, as well as how to connect to professional newspapers with projects that would benefit from open-source journalism. This program is open to graduates and undergraduates of any major. 

Mark Schoofs, an associate professor of journalism, said open-source journalism is an approach to reporting that looks at the information people leave behind in their daily lives — like social media posts — and verifying and collecting that data.

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“We’re constantly leaving digital traces,” Schoofs said. “The question is … how do you use it to tell stories? This is the most cutting-edge form of investigative journalism, so we wanted to create the best program in [the United States] to teach it.” 

In this program, students will be able to get real-world experience with open-source investigative journalism and be able to propose their own projects and stories to investigate in class or take on a project that their professors proposed. 

Additionally, the program intends to connect students with established newspapers across the country, such as the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian. Kevin Reyes, an adjunct instructor of journalism, said students will be paired with projects from other news outlets that could benefit from open-source journalism, and use their skills in this new field to contribute to and advance these articles. 

“There is a skill gap [regarding open-source journalism] in professional settings, where students who were learning this in the classroom would be able to greatly contribute to good stories that are being produced by actual newsrooms,” Reyes said. “Oftentimes these stories rely on digital evidence, and that’s what the students are able to develop.”

The Viterbi School of Engineering and Information Sciences Institute are also collaborating with Annenberg on this project. Craig Knoblock, the vice dean of engineering and the executive director of ISI, said ISI intends to provide the journalism students at Annenberg with the technology required to do open-source journalism. 

“[We’re] trying to create tools for journalists to use to make [data collection] easy for them, because right now there’s a lot of manual work, a lot of very time-consuming data collection and analysis,” Knoblock said. “I think the opportunity here is actually to create these tools that become things that journalists across the world could actually use.” 

Reyes said he wanted students across various majors to participate in this course in order to take advantage of as many different skill sets as possible: For example, global studies and international relations majors could bring subject matter expertise, and architecture majors could bring an understanding of 3D modeling. 

“Our goal is for these classes to not just attract journalism students, or Annenberg students as a whole, but students across the university to come and collaborate and make it a very interdisciplinary course,” Reyes said. 

Students with no investigative journalism experience will have to first take Annenberg’s “Introduction to Investigative Reporting” class, as well as Annenberg’s “Introduction to OSINT Reporting” class, in order to acquire the basics of digital reporting.

In addition to working alongside Viterbi and ISI, Reyes said that the program also hosted professional open-source journalists over Zoom, such as members of the visual investigations team at The New York Times and open-source journalists in human rights organizations, to answer students questions regarding open-source journalism as a possible career.

“We bring in practitioners to talk to students about their experience in this type of reporting … to talk to the students about the skills that are needed to actually write good, compelling investigations,” Reyes said. “Students can ultimately … have a roadmap from people that they’ve talked to, that are practicing in the field, on how to be successful in this career.”