The Data Journalism Handbook

by kreutz • 14 years ago

90 19 14 years ago

asanwal• 14 years ago

Where can people with Data Journalist skills be found? We're trying to hire what we're calling a Data Editor (similar I believe) where the role is about using our data to tell compelling data-driven stories. It requires the ability to analyze and ask questions of our data (in MS Excel at a minimum) to ultimately develop short data-driven narratives of their findings.

While we've found folks who are amazing at the data analysis part or the writing part, never have the two met. Either we're looking for a unicorn or simply not looking in the right places? Any recs on where to look?

msy2• 14 years ago

I do what you're describing, as a community it's a real mix of backgrounds. Personally I think you're best off looking for someone with an editorial background and a willingness or interest in the technical side than the other way around, a knack for spotting a story is a harder skill to learn. The other thing is that presenting those stories in anything other than words is another skillset entirely, both in terms of design and development. Finding someone that can do all 3 very well is a tall order. More recent grads coming out of journo school increasingly have some programming or stats proficiency, that would be the best place to start looking. The other place would be the more hard (as in both high quality and more technically/theory focussed) graphic/information design courses.

stdbrouw2• 14 years ago

Dunno, the trouble with a lot of data journalism that currently exists, is that the people doing it don't have a strong statistical background and tend to forget things like using null hypotheses and regression analysis and take the things they find in data at face value much too often. So sure, teach a writer to do data analysis, but when you do, really teach them.

markng• 14 years ago

IRE's NICAR listserv and conference are the best place.

beilabs• 14 years ago

You should checkout Laura + Chris Amicos project, Homicide Watch DC.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1368665357/a-one-year-st...

http://homicidewatch.org/

Seems like data journalism + homicide + startups all wrapped in one.

njharman• 14 years ago

Grow'm. Hire / promote a tech savvy journalist / writer. The programming / data analysis part can be learned. Much harder to learn "compelling" writing.

mjw• 14 years ago

True, although while the more practical mechanics of programming for data analysis can be learned easily, I wouldn't underestimate the time taken to really learn how to be scientific in thinking about and analysing data.

I feel like the skill-set involved in digging for stories in data can sometimes be at odds with a scientific approach---which requires a lot of rigour and self-honesty before claiming some observed trend is significant, and in avoiding the temptation to over-interpret or over-extrapolate.

Of course this may or may not be a problem, depending on what you're trying to do (entertain? persuade? understand? model? predict?)

rektify• 14 years ago

Many folks in web analytics consulting have similar skills. All about finding a story in the thicket of data, and then constructing a narrative to communicate to your client.

danso• 14 years ago

Check out Hacks/Hackers, a group cofounded by an editor at the New York Times and one of the cofounders of Storify. There's branches all over the world

001sky• 14 years ago

The role is about using our data to tell compelling data-driven stories

People that can are not at all uncommon -- but most often they found in high executive levels or finacial services, where their work is not public. Most of the work that is published for the public is not of the same caliber as what is consumed internally. The issue you may be describing is just about supply/demand at a certain price point and rank within an organization, etc.

ronmac• 14 years ago

Check out my sample links. Data is from the World Bank.

www.bricbracs.com/worldbank/foodfactor/

www.bricbracs.com/worldbank/footprints/

me_bx• 14 years ago

Hi,

datadrivenjournalism.net has a jobs section: http://jobs.datadrivenjournalism.net/

Otherwise, the data-driven-journalism mailing list from okfn has quite a large audience: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalis...

Hope this helps,

rickmb• 14 years ago

Seriously, "wobbing" is now becoming an internationally used term?

The word is derived from the acronym WOB, which stands for "Wet Openbaarheid Bestuur", a relatively recent Dutch law that obliges government institutes to make government documents available upon request. This law is systematically being sabotaged by all layers of government, to the point of intimidating people who dare to make such a request.

stdbrouw2• 14 years ago

Couple of Dutch co-authors of that book, so it's much more likely that it sort of slipped past the editors :-) In the US people are more likely to talk about FOI or FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests.

idm2• 14 years ago

I think this is a great idea, but the web version of the document is surprisingly difficult to navigate and read. In fact, it's downright unpleasant. I understand why it is available as a hardcopy version through a publisher, but I wonder why the PDF isn't available for web use.

mcantelon• 14 years ago

Possibly because the PDF might be an alternative to any e-reader version they choose to sell.

lilianabounegru• 14 years ago

Hi. We're working on making the source code that was used to generate the web version and the ebook available on Github soon. With that anyone can easily generate a copy of the book in any format of their choice.

Liliana

idm2• 14 years ago

Great stuff! Thank you very much for your reply, and I look forward to it.

The Data Journalism Handbook

Related Stories