This is one of a series of blog posts from the second ONA class of MJ Bear Fellows, three journalists under 30 who are beginning to make their voices heard and expand the boundaries of digital news. Fellow Hagit Bachrach is a video producer at the Council on Foreign Relations.

As part of my MJ Bear Fellowship, I had the great fortune of being mentored by Paul Cheung, Global Interactives Editor at the Associated Press. A few months back, Paul invited me to shadow him for the day and check out the great work he and his team are doing up close.

You’ve probably come across AP’s data-driven graphics, 3-D animations, photos and videos on any one of its members’ websites, possibly without realizing that AP is behind any of them. I thought I’d share some of my observations and takeaways for my peek behind the AP curtain:

With less than two months to go until I graduate from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, I’ve been looking back at my experience over the past two years. I’m among a handful of students at the school who are really interested in data journalism and making pretty and functional online news packages. It’s made me think about how J-schools need a more structured and thorough track for us computer-assisted reporters, for lack of a better term.

Forget the saying. Jacks-and-Jills-of-all-trades are, in fact, masters of one: the agile education. The ability to learn quickly is obviously helpful in all contexts, but it is becoming essential in the world of data journalism.

Nearly every week there is some new hot data visualization tool, social networking service or productivity application to speed up processes. Those who have the ability to stay on top of these rapidly changing technologies have an immense advantage in the job market. To be a successful computational journalist, you need to have an affinity for shiny things.

It would be a hopeless task to know the ins and outs of every piece of technology related to journalism — especially while excelling at school or a full-time job. The only way to stay up to date is to learn by doing.

Join the ONA13 brainstorm on Branch

What do you want to see at ONA13? We’ll be opening the ONA13 Suggestion Box soon, which will allow anyone to submit a session idea, but before we do, we’d like you to help shape the direction of ONA13.

Join the conversations we’re hosting on Branch now: What do you want to see at ONA13? and What is the most creative learning experience or presentation that you’ve seen lately? Over two dozen journalists have already weighed in.

Deadline Approaching for Data Journalism Awards

Applications are due April 5 for the Data Journalism Awards, administered by the The Global Editor’s Network, and recognizing outstanding work in the field of data journalism worldwide. Eight awards will be given in four categories, with 15,000€ in prize money. Submit your work.

Innovation Uncensored

ONA members, save $50 on registration for Fast Company’s signature Innovation Uncensored event April 23-24 at Terminal 5 in New York City, where you can meet today’s most creative and daring business leaders.

This is one of a series of blog posts from the second ONA class of MJ Bear Fellows, three journalists under 30 who are beginning to make their voices heard and expand the boundaries of digital news. Fellow Tricia Fulks is the story director and researcher for Hollow: An Interactive Documentary.

A behind-the-scenes look at a Hollow's development meeting.

I’ve written about Hollowa few times here, and if you haven’t been able to tell, I’m pretty excited about the team and what we’re doing. Even more exciting is the fact that although our project won’t be out in the world until spring, people already are talking about it.

One of the smart things we’ve done from the get-go is continue to update our audience on what’s happening behind the scenes. We chart our progress through Kickstarter updates, Hollow’s blog and, of course, social media. We’ve also spoken at various events and networked with those in our industry. This is critical, not only to be transparent with the community we’re working with, but to create hype around what we’re doing.

And guess what? That hype — it’s working.

Help us brainstorm for this year’s Online News Association Conference. We’ll be opening the ONA13 Suggestion Box soon, which will allow anyone to submit a session idea, but before we do, we’d like you to help shape the direction of ONA13. Lots of journalists have weighed in on our first ONA13 Branch, “What would you like to see and experience at ONA13?” and this second Branch is a space to capture inspiring conversations, presentations and other experiences that could enrich this year’s conference.

The first step is to ask to join the Branch. We’ll quickly approve you and you can weigh in. Want to see what we focused on last year? Check out the ONA12 site.

Once you’ve joined, be sure to invite others. We want to hear from as many people as possible!

We’re getting excited for this year’s Online News Association Conference and want your help to make it even more interesting and exciting than previous ONA conferences.

We’re going to blow up our traditional model this year, leaving space for lots of innovative programming. We’ll be opening the ONA13 Suggestion Box soon, which will allow anyone to submit a session idea, but before we do, we’d like you to help shape the direction of ONA13.

The first step is to ask to join the Branch. We’ll quickly approve you and you can weigh in. Want to see what we focused on last year? Check out the ONA12 site.

Once you’ve joined, be sure to invite others. We want to hear from as many people as possible!

USA Today writer Michael Wolff deemed Columbia’s selection of Steve Coll as the new dean of its graduate j-school “an audacious statement about news values and direction,” due in part to the fact that Coll isn’t active on Twitter. I guess this means I should give my scholarship back.

Somehow, I never got around to joining Facebook. Or Twitter. Or LinkedIn. Or Google Plus. I also don’t own a smartphone or a tablet device. As a graduate student studying digital media, the irony isn’t lost on me.

Here’s a quick shot of the BBC’s floor plan from @bbcsteveh‘s #newsroomdesign presentation at #ONA twitter.com/saila/status/2…

— Craig Saila (@saila) September 22, 2012

As a programmer-journalist studying journalism/computer science, I’ve found myself at the “intersection of journalism and technology” or in the emerging field of computational journalism.

I used to think the technical stuff was the hard part. I spent my time trying to grasp scope in JavaScript, scraping webpages or learning the MVC framework of the week. But here’s the thing — programming? That’s actually the easy part. (N.B.: That’s not to say it’s trivial.)

The real issue: How do we use these tools (see: robots) to tell better stories and present information in a correct yet impactful way? How do we leverage machines to do better journalism?

I’ve learned not to get so caught up in the technical flashy stuff that I lose sight of this overarching goal. And that’s why I say programming is the easy part. What good does it do to code a flashy display of charts/figures/data/tables/insert buzzword here if it’s not doing the story justice?

And that’s why I’d like to talk a bit about silos and pods.

This is one of a series of blog posts from the second ONA class of MJ Bear Fellows, three journalists under 30 who are beginning to make their voices heard and expand the boundaries of digital news. Fellow Hagit Bachrach is a video producer at the Council on Foreign Relations.

If you work for a low-budget operation, or you’re just getting started building a portfolio, there are a lot of open-source or free tools out there that can help you bring your content to life. These are a few of my favorites:

Video: YouTube

YouTube has a lot of benefits — being free is just one of them. The platform is not just a player, it’s now also a video editor. While a far cry from Final Cut Pro or Premiere as far as its capabilities, it gives you the keys to some of the basics, like trimming your videos, compiling a video from multiple clips, stabilizing your shots or applying some filters. It also gives you features not found in traditional editing software, like uploading captions, creating playlists and inserting clickable annotations.