ProPublica’s recent Opportunity Gap project brought together reporting on an important education issue – whether low-income students in public schools have equal access to advanced classes - statistical analysis and way-cool interactive tools.

The project used a new set of Department of Education data that tracked enrollment in advanced classes and special programs in public schools. This data is known as the Civil Rights Data Collection, which is compiled by DOE’s Office of Civil Rights.

The idea came from ProPublica education reporter Sharona Coutts, who got an early copy of the OCR data and wanted to see if there was ...

A new specialty in newsrooms is emerging that’s giving data new reach. It’s separate from computer-assisted reporting but shares much of the same DNA. Like CAR, it involves working intensively with data, but the end product is a web-based software application, not a story. A formal name for this field hasn’t completely gelled, but at ProPublica and some other newsrooms we call them “news applications.”

What are news applications? How do they relate to CAR? How can CAR nerds work with news apps nerds?

Simply put, news applications are journalism done with software development, much like photojournalism ...