Do pricing trends in music and books have any resonance for news and, in particular, investigative journalists?

When Amazon.com recently made a new album by Explosions in the Sky available for $2.99 for 24 hours, it caught my attention.

Until then, I hadn’t bought any of the band’s albums. I’d been mildly interested in EitS since it played an episode of Austin City Limits, but given my limited music-purchase budget, I hadn’t prioritized one of its albums over buying new releases by my favorite artists.

But $2.99 made it too easy. I clicked “buy.”

Later, I thought about the psychology of the buy. Why did $2.99 win me when $4.99 or $5.99 might not have? As I type, the price is back up to $7.99 for a download. Had I stumbled on that title today at that price, I would have passed.

But $2.99 hooked me. Why?

Read more » »

Jun 12, 2011 | Journalism, Music
No Comments »

For the last many years, I’ve had an idea for a project. At work, in meetings and casual conversations, if an opening came up for me to tout my vision, I’d take it. Launch the pitch, follow up with an email.

“I’ve said it before, but we really should …”

Sometimes, I wondered whether people were thinking not about my grand idea but rather, ”How can I get away from this man?” Mostly, they encouraged me — even though at the end of our talk it would be clear that other priorities held sway, and my pet idea had to go back to the shelf.

And so it did. Until about two weeks ago.

That’s when a spark out of nowhere set fire to the pile of kindling I’d been setting up all that time. Suddenly I found myself giving my pitch and hearing, “Let’s do this.”

And so for the last two weeks I’ve found myself in a room with the very people I’ve been bugging — some of the smartest, most creative people in my company — each one focused on turning this idea into something you’ll be able to see.

And the best part is that the end product is going to be way better than I ever imagined. Because now it won’t be my idea, but OUR idea.

A pile of kindling. A random spark.

Never give up.

Apr 13, 2011 | Life
No Comments »

After two months of processing Census data and writing about it here, I’m ready for a nice break. But before I go off to explore other topics, I thought I’d wrap this episode of Census 2010 with a look at how my teammates and I processed the data. My deepest thanks to my colleagues for doing such a great job. And many thanks to the journalists across the U.S. who offered encouragement as we shared our work with the journalism community.

*   *   *   *

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?

Read more » »

Apr 2, 2011 | Census, Journalism
No Comments »

The eighth and final (phew!) week of Census 2010 P.L. 94 redistricting data releases brought data nerds back to east coast states — including one of the largest, New York. Here’s my final roundup of interesting stories and data applications made by journalists for this round of the Census:

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.

Read more » »

Mar 27, 2011 | Census
No Comments »

This week’s release of nine states’ worth of Census data took us from corner to corner of the U.S. — from Alaska to Florida — with a bunch of upper Midwest states thrown in. Only eight states plus Washington, D.C., are left.

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.

Read more » »

Mar 20, 2011 | Census
No Comments »

After I started playing with Internet Explorer 9 tonight — and knowing that most developers, including Microsoft, want to wean the world from IE6 as soon as possible — I grew curious about the browsers favored by my site’s visitors. A quick dig into Google Analytics gave me the data for the last few months, and the Google Charts API let me build a quick pie:

I can’t know for sure, but I suspect that most people who read my site are journalists or developers. Most traffic comes from links I post on Twitter or via search keywords that tend toward journalism, data, math and, lately, the Census.

Generally, you’re not an IE-centric crowd — just 12%. That’s lower than overall metrics, which tend to place Internet Explorer at anywhere from 40% or more of the overall market.

Oh, and the percent using IE6? Less than 0.4%.

Mar 15, 2011 | Analysis
2 Comments »

Week 6 in the Census 2010 redistricting data rollout included some of the nation’s most populous states — California, Ohio and Pennsylvania among them — and one of the deepest selections of stories and news apps yet.

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.

Read more » »

Mar 12, 2011 | Census
No Comments »

This week’s release of Census 2010 redistricting data for Delaware, Kansas, Nebraska, North Carolina and Wyoming brought the number of states out so far to 26. Next week, biggies California, Arizona, Ohio and Pennsylvania are among seven states due. So, if you’re looking for national stories, you’ll soon have more than enough of a national data set to mine.

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.)

Read more » »

Mar 5, 2011 | Census
No Comments »

I had the privilege this week of speaking on two panels at the 2011 Investigative Reporters and Editors Computer-Assisted Reporting* conference in Raleigh, N.C. Here are the slides my co-presenters and I put together:

– “Free Software: From Spreadsheets to GIS” with Jacob Fenton of the Investigative Reporting Workshop. Here is part 1, and here’s part 2.

– “APIs: Making the Web a Data Medium” with Derek Willis of The New York Times.

* Those of us with a few miles on the tires remember that the conference used to go by the name NICAR — for National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. People still call it that.

Feb 26, 2011 | Journalism, News technology
No Comments »

The week was the busiest so far in the rollout of 2010 Census P.L. 94 data, with the bureau releasing data for eight states. That made for intense times for me and my USA TODAY colleagues — we had to process the files while attending the 2011 Investigative Reporters and Editors computer-assisted reporting conference in Raleigh, N.C. (Thanks to IRE for getting us a quiet room to work.)

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:

Read more » »

Feb 26, 2011 | Census
No Comments »