[mks_dropcap style="letter" size="52" bg_color="#ffffff" txt_color="#000000"]G[/mks_dropcap]ökhan Biçici, one of the founders and executive director of dokuz8NEWS has started the training sessions with a brief history of dokuz8NEWS and explained the conditions that necessitated a project to be developed on data journalism. DISEMPLOYED JOURNALISTS, CITIZEN JOURNALISTS, NGO REPRESENTATIVES FALLING BEHIND THE GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS Biçici also mentioned that beyond the actual pressure that is causing immediate problems of media in Turkey, a secondary impact causing the journalists to stay behind their peers globally is also worrying for the future of the field. In the last five years, technological developments in the field of journalism have generally been not fully followed by journalists operating in Turkey and this also has had an impact on the perception and implementation of data journalism as well. At the training session a video from shut down IMC TV’s Agenda Research program has been shown, which can be considered as one of the first data journalism programs in Turkey. Project leader and one of the founders of dokuz8NEWS, Yunus Erduran continued the training session after screening of the video and explained the one year project through its framework and the planned activities, as well as content format to be published as part of the project. HISTORY OF DATA JOURNALISM After Erduran, academic teaching in the Netherlands and expert on data journalism Dr. Efe Kerem Sözeri has presented the history of data journalism. Dr. Sözeri started his talk with the definition of data journalism and explained the international conceptualisation through samples. PITCHING FOR TOPICS MATRA PROGRAMME SUPPORTS THE TRAININGS Matra funding program of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Ankara is supporting the project for development of data journalism in Turkey. As part of the project, three training sessions will be organised as a total welcoming 20 participants each. The second training session as part of the project will be organised in April and the third one in May. An open call will be made for participants from across Turkey. SPECIAL CONTENT GENERATED BY PARTICIPANTS WILL BE PUBLISHED