Journalists spend a lot of time with data, sometimes that data is even about themselves. Last year, over 500 “news nerds”—the developers, designers, editors, data analysts, and product folks who work with tech and journalism every day—told us about their teams, newsrooms, and what would help them in this work. The results helped shape our work at Source and OpenNews, and folks found it so useful that we’ve brought it back as an annual News Nerd Survey.

Please take a few minutes to tell us about your work in journalism tech now.

The News Nerd Survey is made possible by the support of Google News Lab and the contributions of a community advisory group including Soo Oh, incoming JSK Fellow; Jennifer Lee of Google News Lab; and Liam Andrew of The Texas Tribune. They’ve shaped a set of questions that will enable us to better understand the hiring and career landscape and skill-building needs of this community, plus gather insights into the supports of interest to smaller newsrooms.

Reaching the Community of News Nerds

As you can imagine, the more responses we get, the clearer our picture about who we are as a community and how newsrooms can better support and sustain technical work in journalism, and no we do not just mean video. Once you complete the survey, would you consider forwarding it to your networks and colleagues? Maybe the person across your newsroom who works in another department or your favorite boss from your first internship or the leader of the local journalism professional association chapter?

One of the things respondents resoundingly agreed on last year was that they feel like technologists working in journalism form a community. We see that every day in our work, from the discussions on a variety of Slacks and list servs, to the sessions at SRCCON. We’re honored to support that work and to present this survey as a chance for us to gather data about ourselves so we can use that in negotiations in our workplaces, in planning for journalism organizations and companies, and in celebrating the ways we lift each other up in this work.

Sharing the Results

We’ll release the results from the survey at SRCCON:WORK in December, which will be an in-person opportunity to delve into many of the themes raised in the survey. If you’re also interested in the results of the survey, email me and I’ll follow up once it’s released to help you use this data.

Thanks for the work you do every day and for your contributions to this survey.

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