Data journalism

The emerging field of data journalism is full of fascinating possibilities. For those who are new to the idea, Simon Rogers, a former news editor at The Guardian and now data editor at Twitter, is a great place to start. Rogers is a boots-on-the-ground storyteller who has found his way to the forefront of what is quickly becoming the standard bearer for investigative journalism. He's got a great facility for describing what he does in this Tedx Talk from 2012.






I have to say I love data journalism for the infographics you can produce. Sites like
visual.ly allow the user to plug in data sets to create great looking posters, like this one about the apparently wonderful pineapple. To throw all this information about a fruit into a 20-inch article would likely net a pretty dull result, but doing it this way speaks of so many possibilities.


Data journalism largely involves mining huge sets of information to produce meaningful statistics, uncover trends and discover hidden stories. For a while data journalism was the province of coders, but that is changing, and changing fast. The emergence of apps and other online tools that scrape data, mine data or turn data into great looking inforgraphics is, as Rogers refers too, democratizing the field.

Here's a list of some links that might be useful for anyone wanting to take the study of data mining a little further:

Vocativ is an exciting news organization using data mining and other innovative technologies in their work.  The magazine Fast Company did a fascinating piece on what the group does.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists  is another hard-hitting group of reporters who are making use of data mining technology. They've got some great tips and tutorials on computer assisted reporting here.

The National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting offers courses, data and services such as cleaning, mapping and analyzing data.

Some tools and writings about tools:

http://blog.ouseful.info/2008/10/14/data-scraping-wikipedia-with-google-spreadsheets/

http://gijn.org/resources/data-journalism/

http://sabcmedialib.blogspot.com/2011/07/google-data-mining-tools-for.html

http://www.scoop.it/t/data-mining-for-journalists

http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/211954/10-digital-tools-journalists-can-use-to-
improve-their-reporting-storytelling/

http://truth-out.org/news/item/15306-five-great-online-tools-for-mining-public-records

https://scraperwiki.com/

http://www.journaliststoolbox.org/

https://investigativedashboard.org/

Finally, the Data Journalism Handbook  offers a wealth of information, including this great list  of data journalism examples.