Learn

Join the future of journalism.

The future of journalism requires a deep understanding of the web, of design, of data, of communities large and small, of all types of media. A modern journalist needs new skills that they cannot yet learn in a traditional j-school education.

Luckily, the resources for learning are out there. At learn.knightlab.com, the Knight Lab is curating a syllabus of sorts to make sense of the endless articles, tutorials, videos, tools and other resources for learning the digital skills a new journalist needs to succeed. If you think we are missing something, let us know at knightlab@northwestern.edu.

Through structured, digestible lessons, this site will lead newcomers through the skills they need to learn, beginning with some pre-reading to establish the proper mindset and knowledge.

Before we start learning how to code, there are a few things to know. Learning to code requires dedication and resolve. It requires a willingness to fail early and often. For journalists, learning to code requires adopting an entirely new world view, thinking about information as data that can be collected.

This lesson introduces the basic concepts around how the Internet works as well as introducing HTML and a small amount of CSS

This lesson introduces basic design principles and applies those principles to CSS

This lesson sets up the command line and git

Students are expected to build their own personal website and host it on GitHub in this lesson

This lesson introduces JavaScript, jQuery and the basics of programming

Help us make this site better: Let us know if you learned some jargon or need some defined, had an epiphany, or are stuck on something that should be explained here. Thanks!