South Side Weekly Workshop Series: The Ins and Outs of Mapping for Journalism

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PEN America is thrilled to continue our partnership with the South Side Weekly with a series of hands-on journalism skills workshops this summer and fall.

When used correctly, maps can provide a wealth of visual and numerical information to support any journalistic work. When abused, maps can perpetuate harmful stereotypes or inaccurate perceptions of data. In the first part of this workshop, we’ll talk about types of maps, elements of map-making, and how journalists can utilize maps as a part of their stories. In the second part, we will create a choropleth map of Chicago using the free software QGIS. Bring your laptop—instructions on how to download necessary materials will be emailed to attendees beforehand.

Jasmine Mithani is invested in democratizing complex information and making it accessible to the general public via websites, journalism, and art. She has worked in data visualization and mapping for several years, both personally and professionally at Graphicacy, a creative analytic design agency in D.C., and with the NPR Visuals team. By day she’s a developer at DataMade, a civic tech consultancy, and after 5pm she figuratively (or literally) heads to South Side Weekly’s office in Woodlawn, where she is the current Deputy Editor and the inaugural Data Editor. Empowering disadvantaged populations to pursue and maintain careers in technology is one of her priorities.

Additional information for this workshop series can be found here.