Media Advisory: How a data journalism class project became a Pulitzer finalist 


MEDIA ADVISORY

Jade Boyd
713-348-6778
jadeboyd@rice.edu

How a data journalism class project became a Pulitzer finalist

Columbia Journalism School’s Mark Hansen to speak at Rice Oct. 1

HOUSTON — (Sept. 30, 2019) — Columbia Journalism School professor Mark Hansen will deliver a lecture at Rice University on how a class project on computational journalism assigned to students last year wound up contributing to a New York Times series that was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize.

“Data and its analysis is a unique source for journalists, one with descriptive power on almost every beat,” Hansen believes.

Joseph Pulitzer, the legendary newspaper publisher, wrote that statistics can reveal not only the truth, but also “romance, human interest, humor and fascinating revelations.” Hansen’s lecture will focus on journalism’s relationship to computational sciences, arguing that 21^st century reporters need to be trained to both cover and use those sciences to fulfill journalism’s public mission.

What: The Rice University Department of Statistics’ James R. Thompson Distinguished Lecture Series presentation “Simulation: A plot twist” will include a discussion of the computational journalism course project that helped expose the sale of fake followers on Twitter and led to reporting that resulted in Twitter’s 2018 “purge” of tens of millions of suspicious accounts.

For more information, visit the Rice Events listing: https://events.rice.edu/#!view/event/event_id/38026.

Who: Mark Hansen, Columbia School of Journalism

When: Tuesday, Oct. 1, 4-5 p.m.

Where: McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

For a Rice University map and parking information, visit https://www.rice.edu/campus-maps.

-30-

This media advisory can be found online at news.rice.edu.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,962 undergraduates and 3,027 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 4 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.