The European Journalism Centre (EJC) is pleased to announce that registration is now open for its free online data journalism course Doing Journalism with Data: First Steps, Skills and Tools.

This five-module introductory course gives participants the essential concepts, techniques and skills to effectively work with data and produce compelling stories under tight deadlines. It is open to anyone in the world with an Internet connection who wants to tell stories with data.

This EJC initiative is supported by Google, the Dutch Ministry of Education and the African Media Initiative, and features a stellar line-up of instructors and advisors from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, the New York Times, ProPublica, Wired, Twitter, La Nacion Argentina, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Zeit Online, and others.

Josh Hatch, Senior Editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education and member of the Advisory Board for this course, says:

“Thanks to the European Journalism Centre’s work to foster data journalism’s move into the mainstream, reporters and editors can gain insights from the best in the business. Whether you want to get over your fear of Excel, learn the language of your data geeks, or discover how to tell stories with data visualisations, this course will help journalists and newsrooms learn how to take advantage of these invaluable skills. This is a very good thing.”

The course is planned to start early 2014 and the instruction language will be English. More details about the course and how to register are available at: www.datadrivenjournalism.net/course.

Can’t wait to get started? Refresh your skills by reading the European Journalism Centre and Open Knowledge Foundation’s earlier project, the Data Journalism Handbook before the course starts or stay in touch with happenings in the Data Journalism World via the Data Journalism Mailing List.