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On a Thursday afternoon in the first week of February, three of us from our newsroom’s database team gathered at my computer and tried our best to subdue the butterflies swarming in our stomachs. What we were about to do, we hoped, would not only help us cover the year’s biggest demographic story but also help journalists across the country do the same.

That’s because weeks earlier, somewhere in the midst of poring through Census technical manuals and writing a few thousand lines of SAS code, we’d had a bright idea:

Let’s share this.

Really?

Yes.

Let’s share the data we’re downloading, parsing and packaging up for ourselves. Let’s give it to Investigative Reporters and Editors to give to its members — our colleagues in the broader world of data journalism. Why? Because we knew all too well — having lived through one or more decennial Census reports — just how complex, painful and time consuming it could be to do a good job with the data. We could help. We’d consider this a goodwill gesture from our newsroom and a blessing for every journalist who’s been dreading having to deal with the Census on deadline. Our editors said yes.

So, there we were on a February afternoon: Me, Paul Overberg (who’s driven our Census coverage for years), and Barbara Hansen, our data team colleague who’s also a frequent collaborator on Census analysis. Four states were coming — Mississippi, Louisiana, Virginia and New Jersey. We had reporters, editors and graphic artists in our newsroom waiting. We had colleagues in all four states waiting.

I opened FileZilla and pulled the New Jersey file, unzipped it and fired up SAS.

“Ready?” I said.

Click.

Fast-forward to about two hours later — we had spreadsheets, we had maps, we had an interactive. And we had files up on IRE’s site and distributed to reporters in all four states. By the second day of releases, we were averaging about 20 minutes to process a state’s files and distribute them to each end point.

Two months later, feeling spent but happy, we’d ground through 50 states and D.C. and heard from enough people to believe we’d done some good.

In the process of preparing and executing our plan, we learned a whole lot about crafting a strategy for handling a complex data release. Here’s a little about how we did it and lessons I took away.

The factory

What we affectionately called our “Census Factory” was a series of applications and scripts. From end to end:

FileZilla: Free, open-source FTP client to download the zipped text files posted by the Census Bureau. (You can’t do anything till you download the files!)

SAS: Business analytics software to script the import, slicing and export of the data to CSV, Excel and Access formats. It’s pricy, but we are fortunate to have a license. The advantages of SAS are several: It’s very, very fast; you can embed SQL in your scripts; it has a function that easily merged the three text files Census provided; and it handily exports to multiple formats with little effort.

The SAS scripts produced the CSV and Excel files we shared with journalists. They also provided the output for the next steps needed for our coverage:

ArcView: Mapping software by ESRI that we used to generate shapefiles for print maps and the interactive Flash map our colleague Juan Thomassie built. Paul also used it to build a set of 2000 tract-level data that was comparable to the new 2010 tract boundaries. To load maps in ArcView on deadline, we used a SAS script to export a table to Microsoft Access, and Paul’s prebuilt maps pulled data from there.

SQL Server: We built a fully normalized data warehouse to store our processed data and to serve our Flash graphic and data tables via an API. Again, we used a SAS script to output, this time to Excel. For some reason, I’ve had better success importing that into SQL Server than plain text files so I went with it.

The tools we used we chose for a few reasons — among them availability, organizational integration, and familiarity. For example, we’d used SAS for the 2000 Census and saved our scripts — and we simply modified them for the 2010 data. Nevertheless, everything could have been done (and was done by others) with open source options such as Python for data parsing, QGIS for mapping, and various web frameworks (Django/Rails) for interactivity. I tend to avoid software holy wars. If you like it, use it.

What we learned

We moved a lot of data, and we moved it quickly. Here’s what helped us:

Diagramming the process: Early on, we sketched out a logical data flow. Who were our “customers,” and what would each need out of the hundreds of pieces of data available? I drew up a flow chart; it helped to visualize which parts of the process would have prior dependencies, and it helped us divide up tasks for preparing code and for each day’s processing.

Reading the documentation: The Census technical manuals were invaluable. Writing queries to join tables or select geographies was only possible by understanding the intricacies of the data, and that’s where we found the answers. Many of the struggles I saw journalists face during this round of the Census had their roots in skipping this step.

Writing documentation: Because we were sharing data outside our newsroom, we needed to document the output files’ fields. This helped us produce better files — it forced us to organize the output in a logical manner and weed out fields that were unneeded by most journalists.

Scripting tasks: Wherever possible, we wrote code to replace manual tasks, from dropping files in certain folders to updating server tables. In retrospect, I see several places in the data flow where I could have automated more and saved myself some keystrokes. Next time …

Getting feedback early and often: As soon as we had output files ready, we sent copies to some database editor friends and Census veterans. They gave valuable feedback on the content, and we wound up adding fields at their request. Once the releases began, we listened carefully to the journalists using our work. Occasionally, they identified gaffes in our documentation or, in one case, an issue with a state’s tract file. One colleague helped us identify a problem with our data import about an hour before the first state dropped. Having your work fact-checked by the brightest in the business is a huge benefit to sharing data.

Enlisting fresh eyes: After spending two months coding scripts and creating the factory, Paul and I asked our colleague Barbara Hansen to be a fresh set of eyes on our work. She ran our scripts from end to end, double-checked every calculation and file, and generally helped us avoid looking foolish. It was a huge help.

Even with all the prep, my palms were a tad moist that first day of processing in February. They became even more moist when I discovered mid-stream that one of my table joins needed an extra qualifier to work right. But all the prep even made that easy to fix. We all heaved a sigh of relief when the data streamed onto our web site.

District of Columbia: With 39,000 fewer black people since 2000, the nation’s capital is on the verge of seeing blacks lose majority status there, The Washington Post wrote. Its story explained:

The demographic change is the result of almost 15 years of gentrification that has transformed large swaths of Washington, especially downtown. As housing prices soared, white professionals priced out of neighborhoods such as Dupont Circle began migrating to predominantly black areas such as Petworth and Brookland.

The Post offered a ward-by-ward graphic explaining the city’s population changes, and its interactive map was updated to include D.C. along with Maryland and Virginia.

Maine: The state, which is 94% white, lost population in its north and eastern counties, The Bangor Daily News reported. On that page, note the BDN’s use of a Census Bureau-provided interactive map — one of many cases where news orgs picked up a government-issued graphic.

Massachusetts: The Boston Globe had comprehensive coverage of the state’s demographic shifts. Whites continue to flee cities; Boston grew, but slowly. In Upton, the fastest-growing town in the state, officials think the growth rate is partially due to the Census’ missing hundreds of addresses in 2010. Meanwhile, the biggest percentage loss happened in the affluent Boston suburb of Lincoln. The Globe had an interactive dot-density map with data tables.

Michigan: Detroit’s 25% population drop was the lead for the Detroit Free Press and others who covered the state. The New York Times called it “the country’s most startling example of modern urban collapse” and noted that many blacks have moved to nearby suburbs.

New Hampshire: The state remained among the whitest in the nation and grew faster than neighboring Vermont and Massachusetts, USA TODAY reported.

New York: The nation’s third most-populous state also had the fifth slowest growth rate, just 2.1%. But New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to challenge the count, saying that he believes the city has more than the 8.2 million residents the Census Bureau counted, according to stories by the Times, WNYC and USA TODAY. A graphic from the Times showed changes in population and housing by tract. WNYC also pulled maps together (on his blog, John Keefe explains how he did it.)

Also from New York news orgs:

– Farther upstate, my pals at the Poughkeepsie Journal wrote about how Dutchess County was the fifth-fastest growing county in the state.
– Rochester lost population in the last decade, a 4.2% drop that was worse than other large cities in the state, according to the Democrat & Chronicle.
– Syracuse and other central upstate areas slowed or reversed population declines, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard.

Rhode Island: It had the lowest population growth rate among states — if you exclude Michigan’s decline. In addition to several stories, the Providence Journal mapped population change and legislative districts.

South Carolina: The state’s 15% growth ranked it 10th in the U.S. in the last decade, pushed by growth in minorities and people moving there for jobs.

West Virginia: An anemic 2.5% growth for the state had Charleston officials worried the city’s population would drop below 50,000, but it didn’t. “I guess we’re the only first-class city in the state,” Mayor Danny Jones told The Charleston Gazette. The eastern panhandle saw the most growth as it increasingly became distant suburbs for the Washington, D.C., metro area, USA TODAY reported.

National work: The issuance of the last states’ data, naturally, will lead to plenty of national-level looks at the data in coming weeks. Early work included stories on Hispanics passing 50 million. And the Times has a map of the P.L. 94 data for every county and tract in the country, though I hope someone will soon find a way to display Google maps in the Albers projection. The Mercator projection used by Google introduces distortion and always seems odd to me — it’s just not the shape of the U.S. we all grew up with.

So, there! That brings this round to a close. Eight weeks, 50 states and D.C., and plenty of amazing reporting, interactives and stories. I hope you’ve been as inspired as I have.

My USA TODAY colleague Paul Overberg and I continued pulling each state’s data for our interactive map and state profile pages, and our shop continued to write at least one story about each state. This week, reporter Dennis Cauchon’s story on North Dakota’s population boom was picked up by the Drudge Report and became our site’s top story for a day and a half. Who’d have thought?

Here’s a rundown of interesting stories and interactives:

Smart story: Rob Chaney of Montana’s The Missoulian wrote about Huson, one of 85 new “places” designated by the Census Bureau in the 2010 count. Shows what you can do if you can think non-numbers about a numbers story. Don’t miss the final quote.

Trend: The New York Times wrote about the growth in Mississippi’s multiracial population, up 70% since 2000.

From the states:

Alaska: The state saw healthy growth in the last decade — especially in the Anchorage suburbs — but some rural communities shrank. Our story noted a drop in logging and salmon fishing could be a cause. The Anchorage Daily News wrote that much of Alaska’s growth came in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. It includes Wasilla, home to Sarah Palin.

Florida: The fourth largest state (18.8 million people) saw growth slow in the last decade but still beat the national trend. Lots of coverage:

– The Palm Beach Post published an interactive map that, on load, shows population change by county for the state. Zoom in for changes in smaller geographies. A static graphic with its overall trend story showed growth by tract in Palm Beach County. It also reported that officials in local towns believe their population counts are too low.

– Florida Today had its own interactive map showing population by block group in Brevard County.

– Among its coverage, The Miami Herald highlighted Miramar, a city in Broward County with a 68% population increase.

– In Fort Lauderdale, the Sun-Sentinel had a story about Broward County’s loss of non-Hispanic whites. It also published an interactive showing population change by Census tract in Palm Beach County.

– Here’s the Orlando Sentinel’s interactive map showing central Florida population trends by cities, tracts and counties.

Georgia: The state’s 18% population growth will give it an additional seat in the House of Representatives. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote about the political maneuvering that will take place in the fast-growing counties north of Atlanta. A USA TODAY story focused on increasing black population being a growth-driver.

Kentucky: The Courier-Journal in Louisville reported on the state’s growth in its central region, which offset losses in the east and west. The Lexington Herald-Leader had a similar take.

Minnesota: The state “long known as the home of Norwegian farmers and German brewers is becoming more diverse,” USA TODAY wrote, particularly its children. The St. Paul Pioneer Press used Tableau to map population change by county and graph other indicators, and a story noted that redistricting would likely see the state’s Republican members of the U.S. House lose constituents.

New Mexico: Hispanics passed non-Hispanic whites in the southwest state, helping fuel growth there, USA TODAY reported.

North Dakota: Aside from our story, I couldn’t find much. Anyone?

That’s it for this week. As always, please alert me to any glaring omissions. Next week brings the end of this Census season — at least in terms of P.L. 94 redistricting data. We all know the Census never ends. It’s like the mail.

Highlights:

Arizona: The state’s 46% increase in Hispanic residents in the last decade was a prime mover in its growth, The Arizona Republic reported. The New York Times’ story says that Arizona’s Hispanic growth was slower than expected, however, and some activists suspect an undercount.

California: Reporting from the Golden State was robust and comprehensive:

– The Los Angeles Times explained that the state’s rising Hispanic population and strong growth in its interior counties would likely lead to a political power shift. The interactive maps accompanying the story take a smart, original angle — showing how each congressional and state legislative district differs in population from the targets that will be used to redraw them. Also from the LAT: a piece on the state’s housing boom and bust.

– Nonprofit The Bay Citizen focused (naturally) on the San Francisco/Oakland area and surrounding counties, with stories on fast growth of the Asian population in the South Bay, the region’s loss of children due to affordability, and its increased diversity. An interactive maps the region’s county and city population change.

– The Orange County Register pointed out that “California’s population would have dropped over the past two decades were it not for a huge increase in Hispanics and Asians” and published its own interactive map showing the population shift inland.

– At USA TODAY, a story focused on problems associated with the state’s slower growth.

Connecticut: Spillover growth from New York has helped make Connecticut one of the nation’s densest states, USA TODAY wrote. And in the I-didn’t-know-that department, an AP story said the state will use the Census to determine whether and where to issue more liquor store permits.

Idaho: The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., updated its comprehensive interactive app with Idaho data and wrote that population shifts in the state will likely mean a loss of political power for the rural north-central part of the state. A USA TODAY story said that transplants from California were among those fueling the state’s growth.

Ohio: Several news outlets wrote about declining population in major cities. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer covered its city’s population drop below 400,000 — its lowest count in 100 years — and efforts to bring it back. A detailed static graphic showed Cleveland’s dramatic population increase and decline since the 1800s. The Cincinnati Enquirer similarly covered the city’s drop below 300,000. And The Columbus Dispatch noted that though the state capital grew 11%, its inner city lost people.

Pennsylvania: Both The Philadelphia Inquirer and USA TODAY wrote about Philly’s reversal (albeit slight) of a long-term population skid but noted Pittsburgh’s continued decline.

Wisconsin: The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that blacks now outnumber whites in its city, which avoided the major population losses of other midwest locations. In the story, demographer Bill Frey — perhaps the most widely quoted Census watcher — said Wisconsin’s 74% increase in Hispanics is the “the magic bullet for slow-growing, largely white states.” The Green Bay Press-Gazette reported that 20 of the state’s 72 counties lost population, particularly in the rural north.

Great quote:

“In both San Francisco and Los Angeles, the post-redistricting political landscape is going to look like a game of musical chairs — with switchblades. There’s simply no way that either the Southland or the Bay Area is going to be able to support as many seats, so some of those members are either going to move east or go home.”
– Dan Schnur, director of USC’s Unruh Institute of Politics, in the L.A. Times’ political shift story.

And that brings this week to a close, with 33 states released. Next week brings nine more, including Florida, Georgia and Minnesota. As always, if I missed anything please leave a comment.

On to this week’s highlights. USA TODAY added stories on each state released in Week 5, and we updated our interactive map and data profile pages. A quick take on our stories:

Delaware: Mike Chalmers of The News Journal in Wilmington wrote that the state’s two smaller southern counties grew much faster than its more-populous northern county. Asians, he wrote, were the state’s fastest growing racial group, up 75.6%. (Also see Chalmers’ lengthier analysis at DelawareOnline.)

Kansas: The state continues the midwest theme of rural areas depopulating as job hunters head to cities. Judy Keen reported that the Army’s First Infantry Division’s relocation from Germany to Geary County made it the state’s fastest-growing county.

Nebraska: Here, too, people are migrating to Omaha and Lincoln at the expense of rural counties, Dennis Cauchon wrote.

North Carolina: One of the fastest-growing states of the last 10 years, North Carolina saw its Hispanic population more than double while the state overall grew nearly 19%. Jon Osterndorff said that climate and jobs have made it an attractive destination.

Wyoming: Bucking the rural-shrinking trend, the state’s population increased about 15%. Melanie Eversley wrote that natural gas exploration has driven an employment boom.

More stories:

– The Omaha World-Herald covered robust growth in cities such as Kearney.

– The Winston-Salem Journal dug to tract level for an analysis of Forsyth County’s fastest-growing locations (due, it said, to amenities such as roads, shopping and sewers).

– The Raleigh News & Observer followed the release with a takeout on Hispanics leaving North Carolina.

Interactives:

Aside from North Carolina, it was a thin week for multimedia. Highlights were the Winston-Salem Journal’s use of GeoCommons to map county population change plus tract-level changes in Forsyth County. The News & Observer has a Flash map of North Carolina county data.

Quote of the week:

This about sums it up:

“You either grow or you die. I’d much rather be growing than be in a place where the only viable business is the undertaker.”
– Jim Johnson Jr., a business professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, in the Charlotte Observer.

Till next week, as always — if I missed some good work, leave a comment!

For our part, we had stories on Alabama, Colorado, Hawaii, Missouri, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington. We also continued to update data-driven profile pages of each state and an interactive map. And we’re spreading the Census love by sharing the data with IRE members.

Other work I noticed, in no particular order:

– The Spokesman-Review in Washington launched an excellent mapping/data app. It’s the first I’ve seen that included school districts and legislative districts among the geographies. It also does a great job of pulling together a map and tabular data.

– The Salt Lake Tribune had a nicely written story noting that six of its cities are nearing “majority minority” status:

When the world looks at Utah, it can’t help but picture a lily-white Western state filled mostly with Mormons. But the portrait brushed by the 2010 census frames a different reality — a much more colorful picture.

– al.com had an interactive map of Alabama data. A story noted a theme among the state data — a population shift from rural to urban areas.

– The Denver Post, working with the Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network, wrote about Colorado’s older, more diverse population:

The numbers show that Colorado’s fastest growth continues to be in the Front Range communities south and north of metro Denver, as well as along Interstate 70 on the Western Slope. Douglas County, long home to Colorado’s biggest population boom, continued to grow faster than any other county. Several towns in Weld County, led by Firestone, saw their populations double or triple over the decade.

– In Nevada, The Reno Gazette-Journal wrote that the continued growth in the southern part of the state — the fastest-growing state in the last 10 years — could prompt a political battle over whether to add legislative districts.

– The Oregonian mentioned the state’s dramatic gains in Asian and Hispanic residents:

David Tam, president of the Chinese American Benevolent Association of Eugene-Springfield, … said Oregon’s green economy and technologies such as solar power are drawing Chinese and Korean immigrants. Oregon’s high-tech industry has brought Indian immigrants, and the many Vietnamese who settled here attracted others.

That’s it for now. Five more states due next week!

– The Chicago Tribune’s news apps team launched an interactive map and print graphic that show a dramatic increase in the city’s downtown population in the last 10 years, even while many of the surrounding neighborhoods lost population. As a Tribune story explained:

Hardest hit were the South and West sides, where thousands of African-Americans abandoned neighborhoods beset by crime, foreclosures, bad schools and economic squalor.

– In Texas, where the state’s population grew nearly 21% in the last decade (giving it four more seats in the House of Representatives), growth was driven by minorities. According to USA TODAY’s story:

Hispanics accounted for 65% of the state’s growth since 2000, while non-Hispanic whites experienced the smallest increase of any group, just 4.2%. The black population grew by 22%.

– The Dallas Morning News had a colorful story about Loving County, Texas, which saw its population grow 22% — to 82.

County Judge Skeet Jones and Sheriff Billy Burt Hopper once sat down at the now-shuttered Boot Track Cafe in Mentone and jotted down everyone they knew in the county.

“Of course, everyone knows everyone here,” Jones said, “and when we were finished, we counted 84 that lay their heads on pillows in Loving County every night.”

To be sure, Hopper did a recount Wednesday, a day before the 2010 numbers came out.

“With the man who left to live with his daughter in North Carolina and the lady who died last week, we have 82 people, the best I can count it,” he said.

– The Texas Tribune had a nicely styled interactive map showing Texas population by race and Hispanic origin. Its stories also note population growth was driven by minorities.

– The Oklahoman’s Paul Monies wrote about suburban growth in the state and noted that the number of Hispanics increased 85%. His site’s Census page also includes an interactive map showing Central Oklahoma population changes.

– Finally, our team at USA TODAY launched a series of state profile pages with data tables covering population, race, ethnicity and housing for states, counties and localities. We’ll be updating those as states are released. We’re also updating our interactive map.

And speaking of more states: the coming week will bring eight releases, including Colorado, Nevada and Washington.

Anything Census related you want to highlight? Let me know in the comments!

Arkansas: My colleague Rick Jervis’ story noted the growth in northwestern Arkansas fueled by employers Wal-Mart and Tysons Foods. This will lead to fairly substantial redistricting:

… Arkansas’ representatives soon will answer to whole new neighborhoods of voters, says Thomas Paradise, a University of Arkansas professor of geosciences. “It’s not hard on the population. It’s going to be hard for the congressmen,” Paradise says. “They’re going to have a radically different constituent.”

– The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette also noted the shift northwest and reports another mayor planning to challenge the count with his city losing 6,000 people. Both stories available to subscribers only.

Indiana: The Indianapolis Star’s Tim Evans (writing for USAT) wrote that the state became more Hispanic and suburban in the last 10 years. Still:

“While Indiana’s racial and ethnic makeup has shifted, the state remains less diverse than the nation,” says Matt Kinghorn, a demographer with the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. “Compared to the most recent population estimates for the nation, the share of Indiana’s population that is white is well above the U.S. mark of 79.6%.”

– The Star’s graphics team also launched an interactive map that loads data from other states (zoom out to see).

Iowa: The Des Moines Register highlighted the state’s population shift from rural to urban:

Iowa State University economist Liesel Eathington said those population trends reflect a pattern that’s become common throughout the Midwest. One factor is that mechanized agriculture requires increasingly fewer farmers to till ever-larger tracts of land.

(By the way, check out the modal pop-up graphics on that page. Great work, but the one that shows all 99 counties makes me glad I don’t have to memorize their names for a geography bee — I guess the folks who divided up the state’s geography liked things uniform.)

– The Register also launched an interactive map with a bonus: population histories for each county. Really shows the dramatic rise of Dallas County, west of Des Moines.

Maryland: The Baltimore Sun noted the city lost more population than expected (-4.6%) and could lose a state Senate seat in redistricting. It also has a county graphic showing gains and losses. Meanwhile, in contrast, it chronicles the growing pains of one its fast-growing counties, Montgomery:

Residents were promised “a little treasure in the middle of all this green space,” DeArros said, including a true mixed-use development. Instead, while townhomes and single-family homes have gone up at a frenzied pace, major retail centers — especially a grocery store — have not arrived to serve the thousands of new residents, he said.

Vermont: Vermont remains one of the least diverse states — the percentage of the population that is non-Hispanic white is 94.3%, The Burlington Free Press wrote.

Coming up

Next week’s releases include Texas, Illinois, Oklahoma and South Dakota. Anything cool I’m missing? Post in the comments!

I thought it would be fun, at least as time allows, to chronicle here some of the Census work from other newsrooms that catches my eye. So, here are a few stories and visualizations from week 1:

Stories

Given the geography-specific nature of the data, most stories focused on states or cities. Several examined post-Katrina New Orleans, using Census data to measure the effect of the hurricane on demographics:

The Washington Post pointed to the political effect of the city losing 29% of its population between 2000 and 2010:

The city will also probably lose a voice in Washington: Louisiana will end up with six congressional seats instead of seven because of the lost population, and state legislators are expected to eliminate one of the city’s three congressional districts.

The Times-Picayune reported that the broader New Orleans’ regional population drop was less, down 11% in the seven-parish metro area. Its story, as did others, pointed out that New Orleans after the hurricane was more white and Hispanic than before:

Black residents comprised 60 percent of city residents last year, compared with 67 percent in 2000, the data show. Meanwhile, the proportion of white residents grew from 28 percent to 33 percent. The city’s proportion of Hispanic residents, who can be black or white, inched upward, from 3 percent in 2000 to 5.2 percent last year.

Elsewhere in Louisiana, The News-Star in Monroe said the mayor is planning to challenge Census data because his city’s population drop below 50,000 could mean a loss of federal funding:

“We are not going to panic,” [Jamie] Mayo said. “We are going to see what the process is, and we will pursue it. We are not pleased about going below 50,000. Our whole objective is to grow our city. To me, the ideal size would be 60,000 to 65,000.”

Also from my Gannett colleagues: In Mississippi, The Clarion-Ledger wrote about accelerated white flight from Jackson. In Virginia, The News-Leader in Staunton covered the aging population in the central Shenandoah Valley. In New Jersey, the state bureau covered how the population shift to the south could pose an issue for Democrats, and The Daily Record in Morristown covered a rise of vacant homes in the state to near 10%.

Finally, stepping back, The New York Times wrote about a continuation of the long-term trend toward an increasingly diverse America. Examining the data in the first four states, it noted a sharp drop in white youths and called it “a shift that demographers say creates a culture gap with far-reaching political and social consequences.”

Visualizations

I know how hard this work is, so hats off to all the developers and data journalists out there working on interactives.

– Our Juan Thomassie did a really nice front end to the Census storehouse that Paul Overberg and I built.

– The Washington Post’s interactive map of Virginia lets readers zoom down to the block group level for population growth and race/ethnicity counts.

– The New York Times has a detailed map of population changes in New Orleans.

I’m sure that’s just the tip of the iceberg, but the Super Bowl is calling. Add more in the comments. And remember: up to five states coming out this week — Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland and Vermont.

On deadline, that’s a lot of potential headache. I know you want to avoid the pain, so take some advice from a guy who survived reporting on Census 2000: prep is everything.

Here are five steps you can take now:

1. Know your Census products: These days, “Census data” means more than it did a decade ago. The advent of the American Community Survey — a survey of about 3 million households each year that replaced the old Census long form — means we get annual estimates in between the full decennial counts. And the ACS comes in three flavors: single-year data plus three- and five-year aggregates, each providing different levels of geographic granularity.

The regular releases of ACS data make Census seem more routine these days, but the data coming out soon are different. These aren’t estimates from a sample — they’re the complete counts taken in spring 2010 via a short questionnaire sent to every household in America.

This first wave of Census 2010 data, coming state-by-state in February and March, are the Redistricting Data (P.L. 94-171) summary files. They’ll contain the basic counts of population by race for every state, county and place in America, all the way down to the smallest geographies, called blocks. As its name implies, these data will be used to redraw the boundaries of legislative, electoral and other districts in states — a process journalists will want to keep tabs on.

Later, in the summer, Summary File 1 will offer more detailed data on age, sex, households, families, and housing units — again from complete counts. Then, in the fall, we’ll see the next release of ACS data. Got all that?

2. Know the questions Census asks: Because the ACS has added complexity to Census reporting, it’s crucial to know the differences between it and the decennial count. A good starting point is to look at the forms people fill out — the questionnaires for Census 2010 and the most recent (2010) American Community Survey. Reading those will help you know what data are available and help you answer questions that might come up in the newsroom. For example, “Does the Census ask about religion?” You’ll know the answer is no, because there are no such questions on those forms.

For this first wave of Census 2010 data, note that the form only asked a few questions related to age, sex, race and relationship to the householder.

3. Know your geographies: Beyond the nation, states and counties, decennial Census data are aggregated for many geographies — from school districts to voting districts to Census tracts. The technical documentation lists them, and this geographic area reference manual, though old, has a ton of info. It’s helpful to know, for example, how blocks build up into block groups and then into tracts and what each level represents. Reviewing the available areas also can spark story ideas. Which of your local school districts had the biggest population increase? How has diversity changed in your state’s congressional districts?

4. Know the 2000 data: A big part of reporting Census 2010 is comparing the new data to the 2000 count. Hunting down comparable 2000 P.L. 94 data will be a chore on deadline, so do yourself a favor and get it now for the geographies you plan to cover. You can find tables on the Census Factfinder, or if you’re super adventurous you can download the raw data by state. If you’re going that route, be sure to read the technical documentation.

5. Know where to learn more: Study the Census Bureau’s site, of course, but there’s more out there. Investigative Reporters and Editors has a Census resources page with information on training, webinars, tipsheets and links (assembled with the help of my Census mentor and colleague Paul Overberg). The Pew Research Center has an All Things Census blog where it’s tracking the progress of the count and the meaning of the results. And the upcoming IRE computer-assisted reporting conference in Raleigh will offer sessions on Census as well.

Good luck and have fun, Census hounds.