I’ve been invited to Washington & Lee University on Wednesday to talk about data journalism. Here’s an outline:
What is data journalism? Stories that are based on an analysis of government records, statistics, information and other data.
The power of data
Distraught people, deadline results (Washington Post)
Welcome to Avoyelles Parish, where poverty, race and drugs collide (News21)
How Much Is Your Arm Worth? Depends On Where You Work (ProPublica)
Claimants see injustice in judge’s denials (Sean Collins-Smith & Brandon Shulleeta | VCU)
Skills involved in data journalism
Online research — Google operators, deep web, social media
Data acquisition — downloading, scraping, negotiating
Data analysis (and before that, cleaning) — sorting, calculating, grouping, joining
Data visualization — making charts, maps; putting data online
Open data
Student loan defaults from the U.S. Department of Education
College Scorecard, also from the U.S. Department of Education
CollegeScorecard_selected_columns.xlsx
Crime data from the FBI
Table_9_UCR_2015_cleaned_up.xls
Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory: TRI home page | data download page | Record layout
Excel data files (simplified by Jeff)
ABC store sales: annual reports (PDFs)
Data to FOIA/negotiate for
Data visualization tools
Infogr.am and Datawrapper for charts
Datawrapper for choropleth (thematic) maps
Carto and Google Fusion Tables for point maps and advanced maps
Tableau for interactive dashboards
Examples
Getting bumped from airlines | Published in AltDaily
ABC sales: WTVR story
Point map in Google Fusion Tables
Quiz: How well do you know Virginia alcohol?