Australia gears up for Storyology, Argentina preps for the Media Party
Suggest editsWelcome to August, hacks and hackers! Two big events our cresting our (southern) horizon this month: Storyology, Australia’s biggest journalism and storytelling festival, is next week, and Brisbane held a preview while Sydney is taking the post-party honors.
And of course Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires is prepping for its annual Media Party, the largest Hacks/Hackers event in the world. Jump to the end of this newsletter for even more events coming up in September.
The week ahead:
- Sydney is talking about bots at its Storyology afterparty
- Miami is holding its regular OpenHack Miami
- IRE in Missouri is holding its weekly meeting
- Berlin is hosting London’s own Sarah Marshall
- Africa is holding #HacktheConstitution in Johannesburg
Chapter spotlight:
The Hacks/Hackers Africa chapter in Kenya has been consistently collaborating with Code for Africa, thanks to double agent Serah Njambi Romo, who heads both H/H and CfA in Nairobi. She said holding H/H meetups in the same venue as CfA’s Civic Labs has helped keep the two groups organized and in contact with one another.
“We planned for meetup dates well in advance (at the beginning of the year) and booked the space for all these dates then. In case there’s need to push the meetup date, as sometimes happens due to unavoidable circumstances, we let them know at least a week or two in advance.”

[The Guardian][15] showcased #HacksHackers Johannesburg’s #HackTheConstitution project as one of the most innovative civic tech projects in Africa.
Worth a read:
- Young people aren’t reading any less news than their elders, but they’re getting it “incidentally” (Knight Center)
- A founder of The Verge raised $5 million to start a new digital media outlet (WSJ)
- Google’s AMP articles are about to become more ubiquitous, thanks to a change in how Google presents mobile search results (Nieman Lab)
- Facebook, meanwhile, is trying to reduce the clickbait that dominates its users’ feeds (Facebook)
- Seven European media outlets are joining forces to translate and republish each others’ content (Nieman Lab)
Job openings:
- Asia:
- The South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) is taking applications for its fellowship
- NPR is seeking a news assistant in Shanghai
- North America:
- Reveal, the investigative radio program, is offering a fellowship for journalists of color
- Vox is seeking a graphics reporter in Washington, D.C.
- WSJ is hiring a deputy graphics editor
- Slate is looking for a senior web developer
- Enigma.io, a data company, is looking for a public data sourcer
- American Public Media, based in St. Paul, Minn., is hiring a digital product designer
- Recode is hiring a data editor as well as a drone/robot reporter
- Pitchfork, a music magazine, is hiring a front-end developer
- Africa:
- The Bhekisisa Mail & Guardian Centre for Health Journalism is looking for a social media producer
Other upcoming events:
- August:
- Aug 10-13 – Syndey, Australia – Storyology, a journalism and storytelling conference
- Aug 25-27 – Buenos Aires, Argentina – the Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires media party
- September:
- Sept 15-17 – Denver, USA – Online News Association (ONA)’s annual conference
- Sept 17-20 – New Orleans, USA – Society of Professional Journalists Excellence in Journalism conference
- Sept 20-22 – Jakarta, Indonesia – Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD)
- Sept. 22 – New York, USA – NYC Media Lab Annual Summit, for executives, academics and startups to convene around future of media
- (Hacks/Hackers community members can register with a 25% off discount code: HACKSHACKER)
- Sept 23-24 – Toronto, Canada – Hacks/Hackers Connect Toronto
- Sept 23-25 – Kathmandu, Nepal – Asian Investigative Journalism Conference
- Sept 29-Oct 1 – Miami, USA – Digital Humanities + Data Journalism Symposium
- Sept 30-Oct 1 – Stanford, USA – Computation + Journalism Symposium