Data
Journalism
@MSCNE
2014
Dr. Barry Hollander
Grady College
barryhollander.com
Data
Journalism
@MSCNE
2014
These slides are online at
http://www.barryhollander.com/MSCNE14.pptx
Who the hell am I and why
am I talking about this?
1. Been a working journalist.
2. Used the Internet a while.
3. Learned to crunch data in grad school.
4. Teach it now to unsuspecting j-students.
5. Cecil ran out of people to ask. That left me.
Plus I get a snazzy t-shirt
The word “data” scares people. It means coding.
It means math.
And as we all know …
The word “data” scares people. It means coding.
It means math.
And as we all know …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xjgI5oN8DM
Data
Journalism
@MSCNE
2014
These slides are online at
http://www.barryhollander.com/MSCNE14.pptx
We’re going to talk about
painless data journalism
or, mostly painless
1. Stuff you can do. Now.
2. Stuff that makes good stories.
3. Stuff that requires simple skills.
4. Stuff that creates evergreen material.
5. And stuff that uses better words than “stuff.”
A Quick History
real quick, this ain’t history class
Data used in 1800s, from The Guardian to Florence
Nightingale's report on health and mortality
In 1952, CBS News and the UNIVAC
In 1967, Phil Meyer on Detroit riots, later
with Miami and Philadelphia papers on
property values and criminal sentencing.
Personal computers, more tools emerged.
Support groups, like IRE and NICAR.
If there is a growth industry in journalism, it’s data
journalism (along with – sigh – Buzzfeed).
Why do
data
matter?
Take us beyond the Who, What,
When, Where, and into Why and How
Verify and solidify traditional reporting
methods
Can show what’s happened and
even, if done right, a glimpse into the
future
Increases the credibility of
your work, very important
Gives sense and structure to lots
of information for your audience
Can open new approaches
and ways to tell a story
Allows you to provide
independent interpretation of
official information and data
And let’s you play with fun toys
Five
Components
1. The story or issue or event
or incident
2. Curiosity
3. The data (format, structure, origin)
4. Solid reporting and interviewing (not
just of people, but the data itself)
5. A data-driven mindset, seeking patterns
and comparisons, a social science mentality
Nerd Moment: Think in terms of Variables, which have
Attributes and Values.
Variable: Crime
Attribute: Arson, murder, etc.
Value: How many of each, or per capita, etc.
Data are
Everywhere
But remember, stories are about people.
Never ever forget that.
Really. I mean it. People first, dammit
1. Finding data, negotiating access
2. Cleaning the data
3. Interviewing the data, skeptical analysis
4. Data Viz
5. And don’t forget … real people
Ninety percent of data
journalism is done
with that old friend,
the spreadsheet.
Especially
Excel
But more often
now, Google
spreadsheets
Simply put, a spreadsheet
is the basic tool of all datadriven journalism, at least
on the analysis side.
When we talk about the
visual display of data or
graphics, that’s a different
story. Not one I’ll tell
today.
Examples of
Good
Data Sources
http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/
Images below clickable
http://www.ope.ed.gov/security/
Bonus
You probably have an office of institutional
research on your campus. I promise,
someone is in charge of data. Make them
your friend. So. Much. Data.
Finally, steal shamelessly from
others, such as the NYTimes
Student Loan Calculator.
Examples from
data I’ve used
Here’s the part where I show you data I’ve collected and
played with, just to show you examples of how easy it is to do.
Steal these ideas. Use them.
Dumb (and not so dumb)
Ideas For
Data Stories
Use Yelp for nearly anything, such as a
comparison of college towns and
coffee shops. Not unlike what 538 is
doing for burritos, which everyone
from Slate to LATimes covered. The
lesson here? Be creative.
Ye olde grocery story. Create a typical “college student grocery basket” (fun exercise in and
of itself) and price it out at local groceries. Multiply by # of weeks in a semester or year.
Assign someone to stand at a key intersection and count the people driving while staring
at their phones. Also, the number of pedestrians doing the same.
Students have those annoying but lovable guide dogs in training on campus?
Human Subjects (Institutional Review Board) on campus. Fun data, because
everyone loves to experiment on college sophomores.
Another fun one: check out the Wikipedia page for your school or key people. How often
edited? By whom? What changes? Controversial stuff? Here’s UGA’s history.
Basically, (1) for any story, ask if there may be data, or (2) find odd and
interesting data, build a story around it.
Data
Journalism
@MSCNE
2014
These slides are online at
http://www.barryhollander.com/MSCNE14.pptx
Extra stuff later, probably not used,
but I hate deleting slides
Story
Examples
NYTimes student loan
calculator. Check out
schools, compare.
Private college leaders do well
College sports thrive during economic downturn
Searching IRE under “dormitories”
Always steal shamelessly by searching IRE’s site.
UC loses millions on interest-rate bets
IRE’s Extra-extra. Worth your time.
http://ire.org/blog/extra-extra/
But also search for “education” or even “university”
Steal shamelessly.
http://ire.org/blog/extra-extra/education/
http://ire.org/search/?q=university
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/yo
ur-money/student-loan-repaymentcalculator.html
http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/
Does your cop shop put stuff online, like UGA?
Put link here for them
Common data set
http://www.police.uga.edu/
http://www.commondataset.org/
But, gotta go to your individual school or skuls,
And use crime maps like this
much of it available via IPEDS.
Example stories
http://ire.org/blog/extraextra/2014/03/05/universitycalifornia-losing-millions-dollars-inte/
http://ire.org/blog/extraextra/2014/01/20/free-game-tickets-hotconcert-seats-politics-highe/
http://ire.org/blog/extraextra/2014/01/27/missouri-public-universitiesspend-millions-lobbyi/
http://ire.org/blog/extraextra/2014/04/16/new-york-timesinvestigates-bungled-sexual-assault/
http://ire.org/search/?q=dormitories
http://ire.org/blog/extrahttp://ire.org/blog/extraextra/2013/11/20/gilded-goodbye-manyextra/2014/05/02/college-sports-revenue- private-college-leaders/
goes-despite-recession/