Google’s New Initiative has launched a campaign whereby it aims to train network of journalists across India. The extensive training programme will raise awareness against misinformation and provide new tools to journalists in their fight against fake news.
“The focus of the training will be fact-checking, online verification and digital hygiene for journalists, using a curriculum built by experts from First Draft, Storyful, AltNews, BoomLive, Factchecker.in, and DataLeads,” said Google.
Also Read: How To Send SMS From PC With Google Android Messages for Web
GNI Training Program: Dates, Location, and How to apply
The Google News Initiative is estimated to train 8000 journalists in English and six other Indian languages in the next one year. For this, the Network will select 200 journalists from cities across India, who will hone their skills in verification and training during 5-day train-the-trainer boot camps.
There will be three rounds of applications to become a Google-certified trainer. Here are the dates and locations for the Google training camps:
| Language | Date | Location | Application deadline |
| English | July 30 – August 3 | Gurugram | June 30 |
| Hindi | August 20 -24 | Gurugram | July 15 |
| Kannada | August 27 – 31 | Bengaluru | July 15 |
| Tamil | September 17 – 22 | Chennai | July 15 |
| Telugu | November 19 – 22 | Hyderabad | September 15 |
| Marathi | December 3 – 7 | Mumbai | September 15 |
| Bengali | January 15 -19 | Kolkata | September 15 |
Also Read: How to identify Apps that are pushing pop-up ads on Android Phone?
Journalists or journalism professors who wish to attend the Google News Initiative programme can do so by applying here. Google said that the applications are considered on a rolling basis, with limited seats for each language.
Newsroom, press club or journalism colleges interested in joining and hosting one of these training programs for teams/ members/ students, can share their interests here.
Commenting on the new initiative, Irene Jay Liu, Google News Lab Lead, Asia-Pacific, said:
“Supporting trusted, authoritative media sources is a top priority for Google, which is why we are proud to collaborate with Internews, DataLeads and BoomLive to support journalists in their fight against misinformation in India. Our goal is to train more than 200 trainers, who will then train 8,000 journalists in six languages over the next year, making this Google’s largest training network in the world. When journalists and communities work together, armed with the online tools to verify information, they can build a bulwark of trusted media to fight the tide of misinformation.
