Janaya Williams
Free Tableau for reporters, data journalism award winners, and handling data sets about race
I think we can all agree that “free” is usually a good thing. To that end, investigative journalists got a huge boost this week from Tableau, which has decided to provide journalists with free licenses for their desktop professional software. Also in the links, the Global Editors Network has announced this year’s data-driven journalism award winners. And Matt Waite of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune offers tips for journalists about how to avoid some of the common pitfalls that lead to the collection of bad data. Your links for the week:
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Tableau Software to Provide Complimentary Software to Journalists (IRE)
“At Tableau we believe that data is an important part of the civic conversation,” said Ellie Fields, Senior Director of Product Marketing. “Journalists have embraced Tableau Public as a way to tell important stories with data, and we want to support them in their work. And while Tableau Public is a fantastic product for making data open, journalists often need to keep their data private while they are developing a story. Providing free licenses to Tableau Desktop Professional will let them do that.” -
6 mistakes newspapers make with data journalism (INMA)
Too much of what is claimed to be “data journalism” in today’s media is really just ego-driven “data porn” — pretty pictures created around numbers with no real reader value, according to an international “data guru” with strong journalism credentials. -
Handling Data about Race and Ethnicity Or, How Matt Waite Got his Butt Kicked (Mozilla Open News)
Race and ethnicity are tricky topics with loads of nuance and definitional difficulties. But they aren’t the only places these issues come up. Anytime you’re comparing data across agencies and across geographies, be on high alert for mismatches.
What journalists can learn from gamers, using ‘citizen sensors’, and best hits of a data pioneer
As the field grows, and the demands for “data journalists” proliferate, journalists find themselves walking a fine line between embracing technology’s potential in the field, and never losing sight of the crucial role of the journalist — which has traditionally been focused on helping people acquire the tools to make sense of information. This week’s links include stories about how journalists and storytellers are adapting the profession for success in this new world of information, where the data tells the story.
Journalism and Technology
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What News Nerds Can Learn from Game Nerds, Day One (The ProPublica Nerd Blog)
In journalism, we’ve heard over and over again that mobile is the future. So what kind of storytelling can we do to take advantage of the fact that if they’re on their smartphone we know our readers’ physical location, and that with the right inspiration, they are willing to move great distances? What if on election day, we could help voters find their most convenient polling locations? -
The danger of journalism that moves too quickly beyond fact (Poynter)
The best thinking about journalism’s future benefits from its being in touch with technology’s potential. But it can get in its own way when it simplifies and repudiates the intelligence of journalism’s past. Machines bring the capacity to count. Citizens bring expertise, experience and an expanded capacity to observe events from more vantage points. Journalists bring access, the ability to interrogate people in power, to dig, to translate and triangulate incoming information, and a traditional discipline of an open-minded pursuit of truth. They work best in concert. -
A pioneer retraces the data trail (The Age)
Author Simon Rogers founded the Datablog in early 2009 and oversaw it until May 2013 when he became Data Editor at Twitter. This book is a “best hits” compilation, a primer for data journalists and a compendium of weird and wonderful facts.
Data Journalists Gather, Transparency, and Data Viz
Notes and links from the data journalism beat
Data journalism is becoming a truly global practice. Data journalists from the UK, China, and the US are sharing data-oriented best practices, insights, and tools. Journalists in Latin America are meeting this week to push for more transparency and access to data in the region. At the same time, recent revelations about NSA domestic surveillance programs have pushed big data stories to the front pages of US papers. Here are a few links from the past week:
Transparency…or Lack Thereof
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OpenData Latinoamérica: Driving the demand side of data and scraping towards transparency (Neiman Journalism Lab)
“There’s a saying here, and I’ll translate, because it’s very much how we work,” Miguel Paz said to me over a Skype call from Chile. “But that doesn’t mean that it’s illegal. Here, it’s ‘It’s better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.” Paz is a veteran of the digital news business. The saying has to do with his approach to scraping public data from governments that may be slow to share it. -
The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism (zdnet.com)
On Thursday, June 6, the Washington Post published a bombshell of a story, alleging that nine giants of the tech industry had “knowingly participated” in a widespread program by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). One day later, with no acknowledgment except for a change in the timestamp, the Post revised the story, backing down from sensational claims it made originally. But the damage was already done. -
We are shocked, shocked… (davidsimon.com)
Having labored as a police reporter in the days before the Patriot Act, I can assure all there has always been a stage before the wiretap, a preliminary process involving the capture, retention and analysis of raw data. It has been so for decades now in this country. The only thing new here, from a legal standpoint, is the scale on which the FBI and NSA are apparently attempting to cull anti-terrorism leads from that data. But the legal and moral principles? Same old stuff. -
Big Data Has Big Stage at Personal Democracy Forum (pbs.org)
Engaging News Project’s Talia Stroud tackled the issue of public engagement in news organizations. Polls on websites don’t yield scientifically accurate results, nor do they get people to address difficult issues, she said. “These data are junk. We know they’re junk,” Stroud said. “City council representatives know they’re junk. Even news organizations know that the results of these data are junk. The only reason that this poll is being included on the news organization’s site is to increase interactivity and increase your time on page.”
Global open data, scholarships, and mapping a civil war
Notes and links from the data journalism beat
There’s always something new on the radar when it comes to data journalism, and that makes it one of the most exciting beats to pay attention to. Here are some links from around the Web to keep you up to speed on the most innovative ways that journalists around the world are using data to tell stories.
Global
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How the Global Open Data Movement is Transforming Journalism (Wired)
Tools and resources offered by Ushahidi and OpenStreetMap, among others, have paved the way for journalists to create compelling data-driven visualizations. There is a common motivation behind all of this fantastic collaboration in data visualization. Breaking news is now often the domain of social media, and advertising dollars are divided among the millions of professional and non-professional content providers who want a piece of the pie. -
Al Jazeera and the European Journalism Centre Translate The Data Journalism Handbook** into Arabic (Data Driven Journalism)
Two Al Jazeera translators work on this project: Nada Ahmed, a translation intern, and Ahmed M. Elgoni, senior translator and the project’s coordinator. Explaining Al Jazeera’s motive for joining the project, Elgoni noted that “For Al Jazeera, translating The Data Journalism Handbook into Arabic will introduce new ideas and data literacy to better journalism across the world”.
Pricing decisions are going to be made whether you have analytics behind it or not
Strata Community Profile on Jon Higbie, Managing Partner and Chief Scientist of Revenue Analytics
Jon Higbie
In his role as chief scientist at Atlanta-based consulting firm Revenue Analytics, Jon Higbie helps clients make sound pricing decisions for everything from hotel rooms, to movie theater popcorn, to that carton of OJ in the fridge.
And in the ever-growing field of data science where start-ups dominate much of the conversation, the 7-year-old company has a longevity that few others can claim just yet. They’ve been around the block a few times, and count behemoth companies like Coca-Cola and IHG among their clients.
We spoke recently about how revenue and pricing strategies have changed in recent years in response to the greater transparency of the internet, and the complex data algorithms that go into creating a simple glass of orange juice.
On the importance of imagination in data science
Strata Community Profile on Amy Heineike, Director of Mathematics
Amy Heineike
According to Amy Heineike, the Director of Mathematics at Quid, there’s nothing like having a fresh dataset in R and knowing how to use it. “You can add a few lines of code and discover all kinds of interesting information,” Heineike says. “One question leads to another, you get into a flow, and you can have an amazing exploration.”
Heineike started working with data several years ago at a consultancy in London, where “playing around” with data shed light on the impact of social networks on government policies. Part of her job was figuring out what types of data to use in order to find solutions to crucial problems, from public transportation to obesity. Her day-to-day work at Quid entails working with new data sets, prototyping analytics, and collaborating with an engineering team to improve data analysis and bring products into production.
Pursuing data science as a second profession
Featured Strata Community Profile on Yogi Saxena
Yogi Saxena is not one to back down from a challenge. The distance runner ran in his first marathon just two years ago in order to win a bet. Next month, he competes in another grueling marathon, his third. And if that were not enough, a friend’s Facebook post inspired him to train for a sprint triathalon. “I taught myself to swim when I was young,” Saxena says, revealing that his drive to learn new skills started early. “And if it wasn’t for the swim part, I’d have done an Olympic-distance triathlon instead.”
Saxena’s love of mastering new challenges is likely responsible for his decision to pursue data science as a second profession, after having a successful career as an electrical engineer. Currently at Boeing, he is responsible for developing a tool that would help visualize feeds from various classified and non-classified sources.
He is profiled here as part of the Strata community profiles.
Science at the speed of light
Featured Strata Community Profile on Analytics Manager Kim Stedman
When Kim Stedman starts talking about the science of asking questions, I am all ears. As a reporter, I make a living asking questions. She goes on to explain the potential of data science to nudge us all in the direction of thinking about whether we could be asking better questions or making better use of the answers.
Photo of Kim Stedman provided courtesy of Jenny Jimenez