Top news and music station iFM of the Radyo Mindanao Network and pioneer digital-first newspaper Digital News Exchange or DNX have teamed up for a first-ever data journalism project that seeks to make sense of the figures related to CoViD in Bacolod City and Negros Occidental province.
The Bacolod COVID Data Initiative will be the first-ever investigative reporting project that seeks to go hyperlocal in collecting data and will coordinate with local experts in interpreting and analyzing these.
“The project aims to foster better understanding of the impact the pandemic has created in Bacolod City and Negros Occidental,” Plotria said.
Heading the project with Plotria is DNX Executive Editor Julius D. Mariveles, a former Manila-based journalist who used to head the multimedia desk of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism or PCIJ.
The Western Visayas Alliance of General Employees for Solidarity or WAGES represented by its secretary general Ronald Ian Dellomes Evidente has also joined the project.
University professor and DNX Managing Editor Hannah Papasin will head the research team while audio and multimedia journalists from both DNX and iFM will compose the core team.
The data gathering and analyses is expected to take several months after which both news organizations will jointly and separately come out with multimedia and multiplatform editorial products.
Both Mariveles and Plotria say the project seeks to, most of all, make sense of what is happening after seven months of a series of quarantines and health and travel restrictions that have affected the economy.