Miami plans its first Media Party; Brisbane relaunches

Happy Friday, hacks and hackers! I thought about putting an April Fool’s joke in here, but don’t worry. I wouldn’t do that to you.

Before we see what the groups are up to, I want to bring your attention to the Website Action Group’s Request for Interest for developing and designing a brand new website for www.hackshackers.com.

Interested parties should read the RFI and submit their proposals to info@hackshackers.com by April 11, 2016. Questions and comments regarding the RFP can be addressed to the Website Action Committee via GitHub.

The week ahead:

• Miami is holding its own Media Party, inspired by the one in Buenos Aires
• Singapore is starting a monthly series of Micro Hack Mondays
• Miami and IRE are holding their regular weekly open labs
• Toronto is featuring some developers who will share newsroom tools
• Munich will showcase two tools, kleineAnfragen and KontextR
• Halifax will tackle how to visualize big data
• Buenos Aires is hosting a discussion on virtual reality

And last but not least, the Hacks/Hackers global open call will take place next Tuesday, April 5, at 1600 UTC. There are options for joining online, dialing in from outside the U.S., and simply following along on the notepad. Tune in!

Group spotlight:

Brisbane, Australia, held a showcase last week featuring work by not just a graphics designer, but also its own members. Co-organizer Simon Elvery said committing to a monthly meetup schedule has helped the group re-launch this year.

”It’s really helpful to have shared responsibility for organising them and also that one organiser is an academic at one of Brisbane’s biggest journalism schools (Daniel Angus) while the other (me) works for the News Digital division of the national broadcaster (the ABC).”

Worth a read:

• The NYT is joining the podcast bandwagon with a new team to create several news and opinion podcasts by 2017 (Nieman Lab)
• Sarah Jeong explains how Microsoft could have prevented their Twitter bot from spiraling into abhorrent racism (Vice)
• Digital news is thriving more in Finland and the UK than other European countries (Nieman Lab)
• That media startup by Jill Abramson – the one that was going to pay writers $100,000 – will probably never materialize (Poynter)

Job openings:

• Latin America
• Mongabay, a news site covering the rainforest, is hiring a writer, editor and program manager
• North America
• Vocativ, a startup that covers media and technology, is hiring adataviz designer and a data journalist
• Timeline, a startup in San Francisco, is hiring a visual editor and an audience growth manager
• Europe
• The European Journalism Centre is looking for a new director
• The Washington Post is hiring a Europe correspondent
• The BBC is taking applications for a digital journalist apprenticeship