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Taylor A. Bishop talks with Matt Goldberg, managing editor at KNBC-TV in Los Angeles and vice president of the IRE Board of Directors.
Bishop: What do you do as a managing editor in news?
Goldberg: I do somewhere around six hours of news a day. In addition, I also oversee our investigative unit, which is made up of about 12 people.
Q: How did you get into journalism?
A: I got into journalism in college. I went to Arizona State, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications. At first I didn’t have a drive for news; I wanted to do production. But as I was interning with a local ABC affiliate, I fell in love with the investigative unit. I turned that internship into a job.
Q: What is your favorite part of your current job?
A: Learning. I’m constantly learning about the world and learning about different types of people. That is the most rewarding part for me.
Q: What are you excited to learn at this year’s CAR Conference?
A: These conferences are the only conferences where you can leave and get real tangibles. Others are great for networking, but with CAR and IRE (conferences) you get skills you can use for a lifetime.
Q: If you could give advice to your younger self, what would it be?
A: I would tell myself, keep believing in yourself and keep learning. Everyone you meet has something to teach you. Everyone in your life has something to teach you. And as a reporter, your job is to get that information out of them.
Taylor Bishop is a 2016 CAR Conference Knight Scholar and a student at Florida A&M University.
By D.B. Narverson
Veteran educators offered three key tips for teaching data journalism during a CAR Conference session Thursday:
- Teach so that each lesson builds into the next, and review often.
- Use topics of interest to students, whether it’s restaurant health inspections, the plight of journalists overseas or a stray dog.
- Create situations where students can easily find stories in data. Don’t just throw them in the deep end. Instead, construct scenarios and projects for teaching that are more simple and clear-cut than what you normally work with.
Meredith Broussard of New York University and Brant Houston of the University of Illinois moderated a series of 5-minute talks from several data journalism teachers.
Houston said it’s important to be a good translator when teaching students to use data and write data-driven stories. He said to break it down, repeat things often, and go slowly.
“The best first approach is to use Excel,” Houston said. “But real data is confusing, so cook it up, get clean generic data with easy, visible patterns, and build in a payoff for using this cooked data.”
“Cooking the data” means changing names of items or people in spreadsheets you already have. Ensure there is a clear pattern in the numbers and an "easter egg" they can find so that students quickly see where the story is heading.
Scott Klein, assistant managing editor at ProPublica, said it’s important to build each lesson into the next and to have quizzes and assignments that require them to recall what they’ve just learned. The quizzes make the knowledge stick. Klein said it’s important that quizzes on previous lessons aren’t intimidating to students or heavily weighted in the grading scale. The idea is to keep them thinking and using what they’ve learned.
Danielle Cervantes, a professor at Point Loma Nazarene University, said she uses a story about a stray dog she and her sister found as an introduction to a project. Her students then have to use data and documents to find the dog’s history.
Students love dogs, Cervantes said, and the project forces them to follow a due diligence checklist. The takeaway was to teach using a topic that interests students and provide them with a clear process for reporting and research.
Broussard said it’s important to create a place – often through servers on the university campus – where students can create and publish online without releasing their unrefined work to the rest of the world.
Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, a lecturer at Columbia College Chicago, said he uses food inspection data to get students interested. He teaches them to make sure they understand each piece of the data, as well as how to investigate the numbers and ask questions.
Aimee Edmondson, a professor of media law and data journalism at Ohio University, said she tries to pull students in by getting to their hearts. She uses a data set from the Committee to Protect Journalists that shows how many journalists have been killed in the line of duty.
Christian McDonald from the Austin American-Statesman said he uses regular expressions to teach his students how to sift through and work with data.
Matt Waite, professor of practice at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has his students use Jupyter Notebook. The online program allows them to code and manipulate data while keeping track of each step they make.
D. B. Narveson is a mass communication senior at Louisiana State University. She is editor of LSUNOW.com and a member of the Manship News Service Statehouse Bureau covering the Louisiana Legislature.
By Kouichi Shirayanagi
The United States is becoming increasingly racially diverse, especially in the West, Southwest and Southeast. However, the Midwest and New England still remain heavily white.
The Hispanic population is growing at the fastest rate. Stephanie Ewert, chief of the Foreign-Born Population Branch at the U.S. Census Bureau, said that especially among children, the percentage of the US population that identifies as Hispanic was 17.1 percent in of 2013. However, by 2060 that number is expected to grow to 30.6 percent, she said.
During the same time period, the percentage of the population that identifies as only white will decline from 62.5 percent in 2013 to 42.6 percent in 2060. The non-Hispanic black population is expected to remain about the same, and the Asian population is expected to grow slightly.
By 2043, whites will no longer be the majority demographic. Instead, they will be a plurality.
During his time at USA TODAY, Paul Overberg led a project on the changing demographics of America. The newspaper developed a diversity index to measure how diverse states, counties and cities are. The question asked was, “If you took two people at random in a particular geographic region, how likely are the two people going to be the same race?”
Overberg, who is now at the Wall Street Journal, said every Gannett newspaper got data from the diversity test and some tried different ways to localize the story. A few Canadian newspapers even tried to take the US story and use it for one about demographics in Canada.
Joe Germuska from the NU Knight Lab said that there are several indices that measure diversity:
See Joe Germuska’s slides from the session, “The way we look next: Mining past and future census data to predict diversity in race, income and aging,” here.
Kouichi Shirayanagi is a graduate student at the Missouri School of Journalism. Last summer he worked at the business page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
By Quint Forgey
The old newspaper adage, “there is no news in the newsroom,” no longer applies to American media. That’s because journalists can easily access publicly available data to quickly enhance reporting and put journalists hours – even days – ahead of competitors when local news breaks.
In Thursday’s session, “Data for breaking news,” John Keefe of WNYC and Stephen Stock of NBC Bay Area offered on-the-job anecdotes emphasizing that the key to great data reporting in high-stress situations is preparedness.
Citing some examples, Stock recounted using the tail number of a downed plane and aviation registration data to track down the name of a deceased pilot. Keefe said he used the name of a crashed ferry in lower Manhattan to mine through U.S. Coast Guard incident reports and discover that several similar incidents had befallen the vessel in the past.
Stock advised reporters to familiarize themselves with various databases well before incidents occur and make topic-specific folders for data websites on personal computers.
“In your community,” Keefe told the attendees, “what kinds of disasters could happen?”
Here are some of Stock’s favorite go-to sites when breaking news strikes:
Aviation Accidents
Automobile/Trucks
Political Campaign Data
U.S. Court System
Federal Spending
Federal Environmental Workplace Safety Sites
Crime/Punishment
Business Records and Non-Profits
Hurricanes
Earthquakes
Wildfire
Welcome! Please see below changes to the schedule and other notes. For the most up-to-date schedule and description information, be sure to visit the conference website or app.
Session changes and additions
NEW! Stealth project management: How to get work done even if you're not "technically" in charge
Thursday, 3:30-4:30 p.m. in Colorado E
Speakers: Erika Owens, Knight-Mozilla OpenNews; Pattie Reaves, Bangor Daily News; Hanna Sender, International Business Times
Description: Some aspects of newsroom workflow are really well defined and documented. And others, well, let's say they're more flexible. Especially when it comes to working on the web, it can sometimes take some pretty creative thinking to make sure what needs to get done, gets done clearly, correctly, and quickly. You'll learn some tactics that have worked in different types of newsrooms and develop a newfound respect for the magical management elves who help our teams function.
NEW! How to build reporting tools so reporters will use them
Thursday, 3:30-4:30 p.m. in Colorado A
Speaker: Jeremy B. Merrill, The New York Times
Description: For search, for transcription, for databases and for ______________, we're building more tools for reporters to use on their own. Let's talk about our experiences designing these tools, building them and promoting them internally.
Conversations: My own worst enemy - Overcoming imposter syndrome
Thursday, 10:15-11:15 a.m. in Colorado A
Speaker: Kate Martin, The News Tribune
Description: Did you ever get the feeling that you're a fraud and it's only a matter of time before someone finds out? Congratulations! You have impostor syndrome. This talk in a small group will explore the causes of impostor syndrome and how to avoid beating yourself up over small setbacks. At the same time, the most ridiculously under-qualified people seem to have the biggest egos. What can we learn from them? Do they just care less? (Please bring your tips because this speaker is not sure she's qualified to host this talk.)
Conversations: Rank that list, what JSchool Students need to know
Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. in Colorado A
Speaker: Lindsey Cook, U.S. News & World Report
Description: What should j-school students learn about data, coding and graphics? You have one class to cram in everything students need to know about data, coding, graphics and the web. Yes, it shouldn't be this way, but it is at many schools. I'll bring some course outlines and a list of skills as a starting point. The goal: ranking each skill from most important to least for the average j-school student. Depending on the number of people, we may break up into smaller groups and then see how closely lists match at the end.
Conversations: Automation v. humanization
Thursday, 12:45-1:45 p.m. in Colorado A
Speaker: Gerald Rich, Vocativ
Description: What are some of the problems we can't solve with computer code and Slackbots? How about editing features? Or general reporting? Why or why not? Take a minute to think outside the box and speculate about what the future holds for computer/human-assisted reporting, and how humans do or don't fit into that picture.
Conversations: News Nerd Book Club for "Information Doesn't Want to be Free - Laws for the Internet Age"
Thursday, 2:15-3:15 p.m. in Colorado A
Speaker: Ben Keith, Institute for Nonprofit News
Description: Join the News Nerd Book Club in discussing Cory Doctorow's "Information Doesn't Want to be Free: Laws for the Internet Age" and pie. We'll start with Doctorow's second law: "Fame won't make you rich, but you can't get paid without it."
NEW! Open lab
Friday, 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. in Colorado B-D
Saturday, 4:45-5:45 p.m. in Colorado B-D
Description: The open lab is a chance for conference attendees to receive live troubleshooting and guidance from some of our experienced coding teachers outside of hands-on classes. It's a space where they can get help with installation, setting up a basic development environment and other issues on their own computer.
NEW! Using Trifacta to standardized and clean data: A demo session
Friday, 2:15-3:15 p.m. in Colorado A
Speaker: Cheryl Phillips, Stanford University
Description: Come see how to use Trifacta to standardize data and clean up errant values. A look at whether this new software tool is useful for data journalists.
Conversations: Meaningful metrics for journalism
Friday, 9-10 a.m. in Colorado A
Speaker: Matt Hampel, Carebot Project
Description: What's success in journalism? From the perspective of the end user, the journalist, the news organization, the industry. Are these very different definitions? Are they hard/easy to assess? * Is every piece of journalism comparable to another piece of journalism? Are there metrics used to determine success/performance for a piece of journalism applicable to all formats of storytelling? * What metrics are you using today and what do they tell you? * What are things you want to know but have no answers to because there are no ways to measures the answer? * What metrics (measures and indicators) are used in your work setting; which ones make sense and why, and how some can be inappropriate/misleading. * What tools/sources do you use to access metrics? How do they fit with your workflow?
Conversations: How should news apps teams respond to the era of distributed news?
Friday, 10:15-11:15 a.m. in Colorado A
Speaker: Matt Liddy, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Description: What's the role of a news apps team in a world of Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News and Snapchat stories? As tech companies build bespoke platforms for publishing the news -- and as audiences shift towards those platforms -- how should news apps teams respond? Is digital journalism that is published solely or primarily on media companies' own platforms now 'legacy' media? More personally, are mid-career digital journalists at risk if they don't adapt quickly to this new environment, and develop another set of skills around off-platform publishing?
Conversations: Investing in news, how do you ask for money?
Friday, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m in Colorado A
Speaker: AmyJo Brown, War Streets Media
Description: We're good at selling our stories, but crafting grant applications, strategizing pitch decks and talking cash involves different muscles. How do you ask for money to pay for your news projects / startups? What works? What have you learned to avoid? What are the unspoken rules — for example, grants may lay out requirements publicly, but what else is helpful to know about how your application will be evaluated?
Conversations: Managing burnout and exploring other professions
Friday, 12:45-1:45 p.m. in Colorado A
Speaker: David Eads, NPR
Description: Struggling with burnout? Sometimes feel you'd be more effective outside the newsroom or in another industry? We'll talk about the pros and cons of newsroom tech work, viable alternatives, and managing burnout.
Conversations: Let's talk leadership
Saturday, 9-10 a.m. in Colorado A
Speaker: Kaeti Hinck, The Washington Post
Description: There are lots of different ways to be a leader in your organization, no matter what your title is. So what does it take to be a good one? A few questions: What leadership skills and characteristics have been undervalued? How do we get better representation in leadership roles? What's the right amount of process for a dev/data team? What keeps a team happy and healthy? What *doesn't* work? What can current managers do to support the next generation of newsroom leaders? Who's the best boss you've ever had and what made them great? This conversation could be geared toward people who are curious about leadership, or current managers who want to swap best practices and words of warning. Ideally a mix of both.
NEW! Custom analysis by IRE/NICAR
Saturday, 10:15-11:15 a.m. in Colorado B-D
Speakers: Liz Lucas & Megan Luther, IRE/NICAR
Description: Short on staff or time? Let IRE/NICAR do your data analysis for you. We clean, analyze and map. Come learn what our team has to offer.
Conversations: Getting organized - Letting information work for you, rather than being buried by it
Saturday, 10:15-11:15 a.m. in Colorado A
Speaker: Brent Jones, St. Louis Public Radio
Description: We’ll discuss how best to organize all the information we need to do our jobs: Bookmarking, file organization, email, paper; how do you make information work for you rather than being buried by it? We’ll try to stay focused on ideas and processes, rather than specific tools so we can maximize the utility for folks, no matter what tools they have access to at their workplaces.
Conversations: Real talk for women in nerd journalism - Women only
Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. in Colorado A
Speaker: Rachel Schallom, Fusion
Description: Real talk for women in journalism/especially nerd journalism. Some potential questions: How do you handle small sexist comments? What are coping strategies for when you are the only female on the team? How do you keep your voice heard?
Conversations: Inclusion solutions
Saturday, 12:45 - 1:45 p.m. in Colorado A
Speakers: Sandra Fish, New Mexico In Depth; Yolanda Martinez, Pew Research Center
Description: Including and respecting those of different genders, ethnicities, faiths, etc. makes for a better workplace and a better work product. Inclusivity better reflects our audience and may help us increase our reach to that audience. So how can we work together to get it done? Are there concrete steps those of us in the data journalism community can take?
Speaker changes
PyCAR (Thursday at 9 a.m.)
Scott Bradley, Northwestern University Knight Lab, joined this workshop.
The way we look next: Mining past and future census data to predict diversity in race, income and aging (Thursday at 9 a.m.)
Stephanie Ewert, U.S. Census Bureau, replaces Maria Olmedo-Malagon.
Intro to JavaScript (Friday at 9 a.m.)
Andy Boyle, NBC News Breaking News, replaces Peggy Bustamante.
Behind the curtain: What open data looks like from within the government (Friday at 10:15 a.m.)
Erie Myer, Office of Management and Budget, will join this session.
import.io: Web scraping without coding (Friday at 11:30 a.m.)
Megan Luther, IRE/NICAR and Nils Mulvad, Kaas & Mulvad, replace Alex Gimson.
Election: Reverse-engineering campaign finance stories (Friday at 3:30 p.m.)
Carrie Levine, The Center for Public Integrity, replaces Anupama Narayanswamy.
Beyond chi-square: Is it a fluke? (Saturday at 9 a.m.)
Mark Hansen, Columbia University, has been added to the session.
International CAR (Saturday at 11:30 a.m.)
Helena Bengtsson, The Guardian, replaces Tommy Kaas.
Turning data into damn good audio and video journalism (Saturday at 2:15 p.m.)
Brian Foo is no longer a speaker.
Spotlight on the story (Saturday at 2:15 p.m.)
Jacquee Petchel, ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, replaces Esther Kaplan.
By Daniela Sirtori-Cortina
Before starting her session on programming languages, Lindsey Cook asked attendees to put away their laptops and use a piece of paper.
For the next hour, she illustrated programming concepts through interactive activities reminiscent of a grade-school environment.
“Welcome to the NICAR session that’s run like a fifth grade classroom,” Cook, data editor at U.S. News & World Report, said.
Cook and Ashlyn Still, news application developer at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, introduced attendees to programming concepts such as variables, functions, loops and conditionals. Code varies among computer programs, but the concepts have a wide application, Cook said.
In an interview before the session, Cook said using jargon to teach programming could lead people to think the endeavor is too difficult for them. There are no real benefits to teaching programming in a boring way, she said.
Cook, who teaches at American University, uses interactive approaches in her classes and says it works.
“You’re learning the concepts and you’re not getting immediately turned off,” Cook said before the session.
Conditionals perform operations or actions based on whether a statement entered into a computer program is true or false.
To illustrate the concept, Cook ran a game of “green light, red light.” She asked attendees to line up, shoulder to shoulder, facing the front of the room. Then she read a series of statements and asked attendees to step forward — or “green light” — if the condition was true for them. For example, some people stepped forward after hearing the statement: “first time at NICAR."
“The game of ‘green light, red light’ is just conditionals all over the place,” Cook said.
Another activity explained functions by asking attendees to pretend Cook was a coffee-making robot. Functions are a collection of computer statements that can be run numerous times without rewriting the code.
Cook asked members of the audience how many lumps of sugar they’d like in their coffee, what kind of roast they prefer and whether they’d want a lid on their cups. With Cook’s help, attendees then came up with a function that could run numerous times to brew coffee regardless of changes in variables, such as lumps of sugar.
To close the session, Still suggested follow-up steps for attendees based on what they’d like to do with programming.
Reporters, for example, would benefit from learning how to work Excel, SQL and R, Still said. Programs useful for people interested in graphics, data visualization and interactives include D3 and JQuery. Journalists interested in programming or news apps would profit from learning about Python or Ruby.
View Cook and Still’s presentation here.
Daniela Sirtori-Cortina is an Assistant City Editor at the Columbia Missourian, helping coordinate state government coverage. Politics is her favorite sport.
By Iaryna Mykhyalyshyn
In addition to panels and hands-on classes, NICAR16 will also offer a number of other non-traditional sessions.
NICAR Conversations is a series of 1-hour sessions sponsored by SRCCON. The small-group discussions will have set agendas pitched by the facilitators before the conference. These sessions will be held in NICAR Commons (Colorado A).
Thursday
10:15-11:15 a.m. | My own worst enemy - Overcoming imposter syndrome
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. | Rank that list, what JSchool Students need to know
12:45-1:45 p.m. | Automation v. humanization
2:15-3:15 p.m. | News Nerd Book Club for "Information Doesn't Want to be Free - Laws for the Internet Age"
Friday
9-10 a.m. | Meaningful metrics for journalism
10:15-11:15 a.m. | How should news apps teams respond to the era of distributed news?
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m | Investing in news, how do you ask for money?
12:45-1:45 p.m. | Managing burnout and exploring other professions
Saturday
9-10 a.m. | Let's talk leadership
10:15-11:15 a.m. | Getting organized - Letting information work for you, rather than being buried by it
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. | Real talk for women in nerd journalism - Women only
12:45 - 1:45 p.m. | Inclusion solutions
You'll also be able to find the following sessions in NICAR Commons:
Thursday
3:30-4:30 p.m. | Building reporting tools for reporters
Friday
2:15-3:15 p.m. | Using Trifacta to standardize and clean data: A demo session
Saturday
2:15-5:45 p.m. California Code Rush
Sunday
9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. | OpenElections hackathon
This year we're offering a new space in Colorado B-D where you can get help setting up your computer with a programming environment, installing security software, finding out how NICAR can help you with data analysis and more. Sessions include:
Friday
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. | Open Lab
Saturday
10:15-11:15 a.m. | Custom analysis by IRE/NICAR
2:15-4:30 p.m. | Crypto Party
4:45-5:45 p.m. | Open Lab (repeat)
The 2016 CAR Conference begins this week. Below are a few bits of information to help you prepare for this great conference!
For the latest up-to-date information about panels, speakers and special events at the conference, please visit our conference page.
Hotel Information
The conference is taking place at the Denver Marriott City Center, 1701 California Street, Denver, CO 80202.
Thank you to Super Shuttle for offering a discount to conference attendees. Details on making reservations can be found here.
Registration
Registration opens Wednesday at 1 p.m. and will be open Thursday, Friday and Saturday on lower level 2 of the hotel.
Weather
It looks like Denver is going to see spring-like weather during the conference. See the 5-day forecast thanks to weatherchannel.com.
Wireless Internet during the conference
Stop by the registration desk or check the app for the wireless access code so you can access the complimentary Internet being offered throughout the meeting space during the CAR conference. In addition, attendees staying at the Denver Marriott City Center in the group block will receive complimentary basic wireless Internet in their guest room. When logging in from your room, you will need to accept the charges; the hotel will credit these prior to you checking out.
Have a question or need help in a session
Room monitors will be stationed in the hallways during sessions and will be happy to answer your questions. Additionally, if you need something, email IREhelp@ire.org and IRE staff will respond as quickly as possible.
Hands-on room classes
We have a big crowd this year, and it's exciting to have so many new faces. We've added a number of hands-on sessions, but seating is limited. So if there's a hands-on class you really want to take, plan on getting there early.
CAR Conference App
Don't forget to download the conference app before you leave for the conference. Have the latest schedule at your fingertips throughout the conference, check speaker bios, plan your own schedule, and keep up-to-date with any panel changes that happen. You also have the option to network with other attendees and complete session/panel evaluations directly from the app (you will also receive a daily email with the evaluation if you prefer to complete it that way). Please be sure to complete evaluations as these help us plan next year's conference.
Internet is not required for the app to work once it's downloaded, however, it is necessary to receive any updates that are sent out. Complimentary Internet will be available in the meeting space throughout the conference. The app is available for iOS, Android, Blackberry and web-enabled devices. Download the app.
Conference Addendums
Be sure to check the conference app (daily updates icon) or your email each day, where you will receive the conference addendum with any last minute changes. A few paper copies will also be available at the registration desk each morning.
Twitter/Student Blog
Use #NICAR16 during the conference and stop by the registration desk to see live tweets on the announcement monitor along with conference blogs. We've got a full team of bloggers and you can see their work online and in the conference app.
Social events/outside social events
Be sure to check out the list of special sessions, social events, and other activities that are taking place this week. Check out this full list here.
Contact IRE
We want everyone to have a great conference. If you have any concerns, run into any problems or need to contact a member of the IRE staff for any reason, we've set up several ways to reach us. Please remember that whether you're in a session, walking the hallway or hanging out at the bar, it's important to respect all of your fellow attendees. IRE and NICAR have long been known for our sense of community, and we should all be sure that everyone feels welcome.
Reach out by phone: 573-880-5473
Send a text: 573-880-5473
Send an email: IREhelp@ire.org
Complete the form
We thank you for your continued support and are looking forward to seeing you in Denver!
Thanks to everyone who pitched and voted on the 2016 Lightning Talks. Here are the talks we’ll be hearing Friday, March 11 at 4:45 p.m. You can read more about them on our Lightning Talks page.
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