The Lede Program

An intensive summer program from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and Department of Computer Science designed to equip journalists and storytellers of all kinds with the computational skills needed to turn data into narrativebreak out of Excelperform in-depth investigationsharness APIsexplain complex subjectswrite data-driven storiesprocess document dumpsfind insights and leadsperform in-depth investigations

The Lede Program

Columbia Journalism School’s Lede Program is a 10-week intensive on coding and data analysis.

Not just for journalists

Pulling insights from data isn’t just for journalists — our tools and skills are equally valuable to social scientists, policymakers, and academics of all stripes.

No Prerequisites

We start from square one, with no prior experience in data or coding necessary. You’ll learn the ins and outs along the way.

Real-World Skills

We balance practical, real-world skills with the computer science theory you’ll want to take your coding further.

Lede 2020 has been canceled due to COVID-19

Program details

Applications for 2021 will open in late 2020

What will you learn?

“Data” isn’t just one simple thing. You’ll acquire a plethora of skills, tools and programming languages to make you a more effective storyteller. Let’s review a few of the possibilities:

Python

Programming language

SQL

Data

JSON

Data

OpenRefine

Data Cleaning

APIs

Data

QGIS

Mapping

ChartBuilder

Charts and Graphs

git

Version Control

BeautifulSoup

Web Scraping

R

Programming language

NLTK

Language processing

Adobe Illustrator

Charts and Graphs

CSS

Styling the web

Leaflet

Mapping and Interactives

IPython Notebook

Accountable Coding

d3.js

Interactives

…and that’s not all, either.

With coverage ranging from an hour of introduction to a semester-long deep dive, you’ll return to the workplace with sharp new analytical, investigative, and storytelling skills.

Applications

The Lede Program is open to applicants with a strong academic or professional record and demonstrated interest in data technologies. Learn more here

Dates

Due to complications arising from COVID-19, Lede 2020 has been canceled.

Tuition

As a professional program at Columbia University, the Lede Program costs less than a formal degree. Scholarship aid is also available. For more information on tuition and scholarship aid opportunities, see our Tuition and Fees page.

Questions?

If you’d like to know more, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at jrncomputation@columbia.edu
Email us now

Application Details

The Fall 2021 application period will open in late 2020

Learn more

Student Work

If you’re curious about the work we do, visit our Student Work page to see examples from assignments and projects, as well as published pieces by Lede Program graduates.