#15-week

Many tenants have waited in vain, sometimes for years, for the New York City Housing Authority to answer requests to clean up toxic mold. The reporting project will employ digital engagement methods to track cleanup progress and help tenants tell their stories.

Students will experiment with new forms of crowdsourcing, while doing boots-on-the-ground reporting – gathering stories, media and data from NYCHA tenants. Some of the grant money will be used to test some apartments for mold, which can have serious health consequences for tenants, particularly children and senior citizens.

Students will work every step of the way with J-School faculty and The News, in news/information gathering and presentation. The product of the project will be represented in both The News’ print edition and website, as well as a J-School site spotlighting the ongoing effort.

This is not a classroom-driven course. The bulk of the work will be done in the field and in the newsrooms of the J-School and the Daily News, in keeping with grant’s call to explore the “teaching hospital” approach to journalism education – in short, teaming J-Schools with news outlets to produce hard-hitting, innovative digital journalism.

Go here to see the J-School’s grant application – one of only 12 winners recognized by the Online News Association, the Excellence and Ethics in Journalism Foundation, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Democracy Fund.