By Daniel Hom
Tableau Public

Many journalists have experienced leafing through stacks of documents, searching for important numbers to back up stories and trying to relay all of that in a way that captivates readers. It’s a world where too often multimedia means simple graphs and interactivity a time-consuming Adobe Flash graphic.

I know these experiences because they were my own when I worked in the journalism industry. I’m a bit of a numbers nerd, but I also love telling stories. I often struggled ...

The web now offers numerous free tools that give non-programmers the ability to create data-driven applications. Among those with the most promise, especially for journalists, is Google Fusion Tables.

Fusion Tables essentially is a free database manager in the cloud, allowing anyone to upload large data sets, merge them with other tables and create visualizations. It’s much more, though. The service has a detailed application programming interface (API), and basically can serve as a free back end to serve data and mapping applications. The service also is customizable while simple, with extra capabilities for more experienced users.

Of course ...