Slightly updated slides (Apr 2013)

1. Data Journalism
MAC373/MED312
twitter/rob_jewitt
robert.jewitt@sunderland.ac.uk
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2. 2009 #iranelection
Image: Gilad Lotan, ReTweet Revolution
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3. Anatomyofatweet
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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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10. Origins
 1950s
 Database Journalism
 Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR)
 Very expensive
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The Indianapolis Star
Capital Journal circa 1961

12. NewYorkTimesNewsRoom
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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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16. Not Database – Just Data?
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Since 2004

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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
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24. Maps Everywhere!
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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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29. 29
link

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link

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Link

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
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 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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36. Paul Bradshaw
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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”

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40. Dealing with Data (Bradshaw, 2010)
4 crucial aspects
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1. Finding data
2. Interrogating data
3. Visualizing data
1. Mashing data

41. Link
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45. Data visualisation vs data journalism
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Video

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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48. Free tools…
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49. Free tools…
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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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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