Michelle Minkoff, perhaps the hardest-working journalism student I’ve ever encountered, for the last few months has been writing up a series of interviews with hacker-journalists and newsroom data nerds at her web site. Her subjects include include designers, coders and data lovers of all stripes. Among them are Pulitzer winner Matt Waite of PolitiFact fame, my Gannett colleagues Gregory Korte and Matt Wynn, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press’s Mary Jo Webster, whom I worked with for several years at USA TODAY.
Now add me to the list. Michelle interviewed me right after one of this winter’s east coast blizzards, and my cabin fever shows in the sheer verbosity of my responses. But it was fun reliving my early days — when I discovered the power of merging data and reporting. Here’s one quote:
A reporter in the newsroom came to me and said, “Hey, it would be really good if we could figure out what the most valuable properties are in the city of Poughkeepsie. And I thought to myself, “You know, this might be a good opportunity for me to go and make friends with the IT guy over in City Hall.” I went over and visited him, he was down in the basement of City Hall, in the computer room. Back in those days, they all had big mainframe computers in an air-conditioned room.
Actually, what I first did was I went to the tax assessor’s office, and I said, “I want a list of all the properties in the city of Poughkeepsie and how much they’ve been assessed for.” And they pointed me over to the corner where there were these big books filled with computer printouts, and they said, “Well, all the numbers are there, and you can just start copying them down.” And I thought to myself, “If they were printed on this piece of paper that looks like computer paper, then certainly they are in a computer somewhere in this building. And I can get that data on a disk that I can bring over and put into my computer.” And that’s how I really started figuring out that we can do computer-assisted reporting by going to the government and getting data.
That’s what I did. I went to visit that guy in City Hall, and I said, “Look, I know you’ve got a file on your computer. I’d love to have you put it on this floppy disk for me.” And he had to check with the local attorneys, and get their permission, and I called up a sunshine advocate in New York state and got him to weigh in, and they agreed that, “Yeah, the law says we can do this.” The next thing I know, I had that data on the computer and was going through it in Paradox. We wound up writing a couple of stories about different properties.
A hat tip to Michelle for a smart way to gain insight into our slice of journalism.
Filed under: News technology, Workflow by Anthony on Mar 8, 2010
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In two and a half weeks, Investigative Reporters and Editors will host the 2010 CAR Conference — the annual gathering of journalists who crunch data for stories and visuals. This year’s conference is in sunny Phoenix, a welcome change of pace for those who’ve endured a few blizzards this winter.
If you’ve never attended and are wondering whether to go, here are five things I’ve found valuable:
– You’ll be challenged to up your game. Every year, I am reminded that if I stand still in developing my skills, I am actually losing ground. The Web has forced journalism to become nimble, and the people and talks here will challenge you to be the same.
– There’s lots of opportunity to learn. Training is a huge component of the conference. People are genuinely open and willing to share data, code and skills.
– You won’t leave empty-handed. Every year, I go home with plenty of tips on new software or programming techniques, sources of data and story ideas.
– Beginners are encouraged. There’s a really good mix of super-technical subjects and sessions for those just starting in data analysis, programming and visualization.
– You’ll meet some smart cookies. The speakers’ list includes Pulitzer winners, folks working in the emerging area of non-profit journalism, expert coders and statisticians, and a load of really, really good journalists all around. Their stories and ideas will inspire you.
Filed under: Workflow by Anthony on Feb 21, 2010
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A reporter called recently for tips on setting up “a CAR desk” in the newsroom of a decent-sized community newspaper. The editor had watched the reporter’s success at gathering and analyzing data and, as typically happens, now wanted the reporter to train the rest of the newsroom.
Here was my advice:
Focus on a few: Instead of holding building-wide Excel classes or database journalism seminars, start with just one or two reporters who show a combination of interest and decent technical smarts. That lets you go deep on a couple of beats rather than spread yourself thin. Also, success breeds success. Watching a few reporters land great stories will possibly spur interest from others.
Have the right goals: Goals like “publish one CAR story a week” miss the point. Better objectives are to have data-thinking ever present in the reporter’s mind, have the reporter well-versed in her beat’s data sources, and have the reporter develop basic data skills. From that, stories will flow.
Inventory data: Speaking of data sources, have each reporter you work with find out the sets of data local governments keep. File FOIA requests for table layouts and database schemas. Get the data, then study it. That will spur story ideas.
Crawl first, run later: All the hot talk in data journalism these days is on Web frameworks and visualizations, but there’s plenty of work for the beginner in the land of Excel and Access. Build those skills as a starting point.
Your thoughts? Add a comment below …
Filed under: Analysis, Workflow by Anthony on Feb 6, 2010
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