When DATA is your moving target This document discusses how LA NACION, a newspaper based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, began focusing on data journalism despite not having programmers on staff. They started small by learning tools for non-programmers and taking a "build once, use many" approach. Examples discussed include creating datasets from monthly price indexes published by a consumer association and bus subsidy payment records from PDFs to analyze subsidies for Argentina's bus transportation system. The document promotes opening and sharing data through an integrated open platform and raising data awareness to activate demand through tutorials and videos.

1. When DATA is your moving target
Angélica Peralta Ramos
Multimedia Development Manager – Data Project Leader
@momiperalta

2. About LA NACION
 Based in Buenos Aires, Argentina
 Sunday print circulation: + 360.000
 Lanacion.com unique visitors/month: + 8MM
 9 magazine titles
 Impremedia (90%): US hisp. leading publishing company

3. CONTEXT

4. Transparency?
http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/ Argentina: 100/180 Level 3

5. Not law,
but decree
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1857498
David Banisar, FOIA Expert. July 2011

7. Data.gov Portals

8. HOPE!
Argentina Judicial System Open
City of Buenos Aires Open Data Portal Government Iniciative
INDEC Banco Mundial DATA portal

9. In LA NACION
 No programmers in the newsroom! 
 But….team willing to learn. 
 We decided to FOCUS ON DATA …
 Start small
 Friend our IT and BI departments (from the very first minute!)
 Learn tools for non programmers: Tableau Public , Excel for
Databases, Qlikview
 “BUILD once USE many” aproach

10. Inflation?

11. Argentina´s inflation data?
 In 2007, the government intervened Indec (our National Statistics
Institute)
 Since then Indec has reported an annual inflation rate below 11%
 Economists and provincial governments started reporting higher
inflation rates (23-30%)
 In March 2011 argentina fined firms over inflation data (u$ 125.000)
 These firms teamed up with opposition in Congress and together
they release another monthly inflation rate

12. http://www.economist.com/node/21548242

13. http://www.lanacion.com.ar/137234
6-oviedo
2010
2000

14. 2010
2000

15. Consumers Association
Price Index Dataset
 José Crettaz, Metro Editor
 Contacted source ADELCO: Association of Consumers
 Monitors prices since 2002 of 28 supermarket products
in two price categories
 We developed a customized scraper
 Converted monthly press release into a dataset

16. Adelco monthly PDF Sample
Adelco

19. Flickr/CC/art_es_anna

23. Subsidies for the Bus Transportation System

24. Bus Subsidies Case quick facts:
 Diego Cabot, Financial Section Editor
 more than 400 PDF monthly payments for 1,300 Bus companies, in
3 categories
 more than 10,000 bus vehicle plates used to reverse decoding
vehicle ages and fleet ages
 customized scraper developed to keep data updated
 more than 235,000 records
 found that PDFs were modified backwards , sometimes overwritten
so developed “PDF Spy” that monitors PDFs based in Boston´s
hackaton idea

25. http://www.transporte.gov.ar/UserFiles/pdfs/subsidios/sistau/2011/rcc_sistau_abril11(1)
.pdf

26. VIDEO: customized data scraper & converter
http://youtu.be/HPs767yOMrw PLAY HD!

29. Building blocks: opening and sharing data
(integrated Junar Open Platform)

30. http://data.lanacion.com.ar Tutorial: http://youtu.be/RueJXNRoVF0

31. Raising DATA awareness to activate
demand

32. http://blogs.lanacion.com.ar/data

34. http://youtu.be/lMvCOjqG0PQ

35. Thanks!
@momiperalta
aperalta@lanacion.com.ar
slideshare.net/Lndata