4. Overview
Intro
Database Journalism and Computer Assisted Reporting
Data Today : Visualisations and Interactivity
How To Be A Data Journalist
Ethics?
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5. Recent hype
Data Journalism
Meta Journalism
Visualisation
Infographics
Mash Ups
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6. Adam Westbrook
“I think data-driven journalism is one of the big potential
growth areas in the future of journalism. A lot of the forward-
thinking discussion about the future of news focuses on the
‘glamorous’ possibilities, like video journalism and
interactivity, but I often see data journalism being ignored.
In fact, I believe it is journalism in its truest essence:
uncovering and mining through information the public do
not have enough time to do themselves, interrogating it,
and making sense of it before sharing it with the audience. If
more journalists did this (rather than relying on ‘data’ from
press releases) we would be a far more enlightened public.
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Source link
7. Adam Westbrook
My message to the next generation of journalists - or any
journalist looking for a new niche or direction - would be
to learn the skills and tools of data interrogation. It’s not
glamorous, but it’s a skill not many journalists have, and
one which will give one an edge in the market.”
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Source link
8. Brian Storm
One of our big goals in the storytelling process is to
humanize the statistics. It’s hard for people to care about
numbers, especially large numbers. How do you get your
head around the death of 800,000 people in the
Rwandan genocide? I think if you meet the individuals -
see and hear the stories of the survivors - you can gain a
better insight into the tragedy.
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Source link
9. “Data-driven journalism is the future”
“[Journalism’s] going to be about poring over data
and equipping yourself with the tools to analyse it
and picking out what's interesting. And keeping it in
perspective, helping people out by really seeing
where it all fits together, and what's going on in the
country.”
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, 2010
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13. CBS: 1952, Walter Cronkite
Presidential election battle
Eisenhower vs Stevenson
Remington Rand UNIVAC
Early vote returns analysis
Predicted a landslide victory
Contrary to popular opinion
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14. Philip Meyer, Precision Journalism
1969: a journalist must make use of databases
and surveys
2002: “a journalist has to be a database
manager”
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15. Other notable examples
Clarence Jones, The Miami Herald, 1969
Criminal Justice systems
David Burnham, The New York Times, 1972
Police crime rates
Elliot Jaspin, The Providence Journal, 1986
School bus drivers and criminal records
Bill Dedman, The Atlanta Journal, 1988
Pullitzer Prize for The Color of Money
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21. Adrian Holovaty (2005)
Chicago Transport Authority map + Firefox plug-in +
Google Maps = real time updates
Chicago Police Department + Google Maps = real time
police reports
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22. Adrian Holovaty (2006)
Now working for the Washington Post
A fundamental way newspaper sites need to change
Most material collected by journalists is:
"structured information: the type of information that can be
sliced-and-diced, in an automated fashion, by computers”
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23. Adrian Holovaty (2006)
Traditional journalism
Articles as the finished
product
Data journalism
Continually maintained
and improved
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Radical overhaul needed
- Employing data
- Making data available
- Storing data
- Coding data
=✓=✗
27. Maps Everywhere!
2007 – Holovaty won $1.1 million from the Knight
Foundation for Everyblock
2010 – SR2 Blog won Guardian.co.uk’s ‘most inspirational
site’ accolade
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32. Interactivity
Transport For London API
Icelandic Ash Cloud and plane tracking
AlJazeera’s coverage of War on Gaza using Ushahidi
Guardian’s Twitter map of Middle East
BBC Interactive on the Spending Review
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33. Bella Hurrell, Specials Editor with BBC
News Online (2011)
Proximity of “journalists, designers and developers all
working together, sitting alongside each other”
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34. Bella Hurrell, Specials Editor with BBC
News Online (2011)
“We have found that proximity really important to the
success of projects. Although we have done this for a
while, increasingly other organisations are reorganising
along these lines after coming to realise the benefits of
breaking down silos and co-locating people with different
skillsets can produce more innovative solutions at a
faster pace.”
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35. Bella Hurrell, Specials Editor with BBC
News Online (2011)
“As data visualisation has come into the zeitgeist, and we
have started using it more regularly in our story-telling,
journalists and designers on the specials team have
become much more proficient at using basic
spreadsheet applications like Excel or Google Docs”
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37. Paul Bradshaw
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“It represents the convergence of a number of fields
which are significant in their own right - from investigative
research and statistics to design and programming. The
idea of combining those skills to tell important stories is
powerful - but also intimidating. Who can do all that?”
38. Paul Bradshaw
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“It represents the convergence of a number of fields
which are significant in their own right - from investigative
research and statistics to design and programming. The
idea of combining those skills to tell important stories is
powerful - but also intimidating. Who can do all that?”
“The reality is that almost no one is doing all of that, but
there are enough different parts of the puzzle for people
to easily get involved in, and go from there”
47. New Tools of the Trade?
Analysis
Excel or Calc
sort your data
Google Refine
clean your dirty data
Yahoo Pipes
Composition mash-up tool
ScraperWiki
transforms info from webpages
into data
R
Process and manipulate data
Visualisation
Google Fusion Tables
visualise data on maps, timelines,
etc
Tableau Public
Visualise and share
IBM’s Many Eyes
data visualisation tool
Processing
create images & interactives
Wordle
generate word clouds from bulky
text
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51. Summary
Is this journalism?
Journalism educators doing students a disservice?
Journalists replaced by programmers?
Wikileaks: no journalist's required?
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52. Links and further reading
Simon Rogers (2013) Facts are Sacred, London: Faber & Faber
http://www.delicious.com/rob_jewitt/med312+datajournalism
http://www.delicious.com/smfrogers
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53. 53
Images
Knight Foundation, 2008, Sir Tim Berners-Lee talking about
the Web at the Newseum
Bill on Capitol Hill, 2007, The Rim and the Slot
Marion Doss, 2008, Capital Journalism News Room 16
October 1961
Igorschwarzmann, 2010, NYT News Room
Mkandlez, 2009, The Billion Pound O Gram
BitBoy, 2006, The Elephant in the Room
Ravages, 2008, Links
54. Issues
To what extent is the traditional craft of storytelling being
challenged by the emergence of big data?
What kind of problems are manifest by the deluge of
large data sets (eg MPs expenses, Wikileaks Iraq war logs,
US cables, etc)?
Can the use or release of big data sets have ethical
implications?
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