The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
CAR Conference Blog
From where? Validating data in the real world
By Anna Boiko-Weyrauch@AnnaBoikoW To understand your data, let’s go back to grade-school science class. Remember when you learned about the forest, and all the animals that call it home? The forest is a dynamic ecosystem. Your data is like a chimpanzee; it plays a role in the forest ecosystem. Over time, the changes in the…
Read MoreGetting data from public agencies
By Sarah Morris@smorris198888 In The Art of Requesting and Negotiating Data, David Hunn of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Jennifer LaFleur of ProPublica talked through some strategies for getting data. LaFleur began by saying that data can come from inspections, licenses, things that are enforced or purchased. If there was a form, then there would…
Read MoreImproving news coverage with data
By Mayra Cruz @MayraC27 News stories can be deepened through data, said speakers in the “Using data journalism to investigate the news” panel. “News happens fast,” Arizona Daily Star Rob O’Dell reporter said. From tracking crime to finance, incorporating data in journalism goes beyond daily reporting and anecdotal information. Adding visualizations, numbers and maps allow the public to…
Read MoreAvoid data dumps, focus on the story
By Mayra Cruz @MayraC27 News stories should avoid boring readers by not becoming jargon-by-numbers accounts of events, Anthony DeBarros of USA Today said at the “Making sure you tell a story” panel. “Our readers want better,” he said. “We’ve got to make our stories sing.” Ron Nixon of The New York Times said reporters have a…
Read MoreSorting through chaos — analyzing Twitter data
By Anna Boiko-Weyrauch@AnnaBoikoW Tweets are tempting but tricky for data journalists. “Twitter data is probably some of the hardest data you can work with,” Jacob Harris, senior software architect at The New York Times, said at the “Capturing and analyzing Twitter feeds” session. Harris said tweets are hard to collect and analyze, and the tools available at dev.twitter.com are not…
Read MoreThe story behind failing government monopolies
By Jon McClure @JonRMcClure Paul Overberg of USA Today and Brad Guilmino of HNTB Corporation discussed the potential stories coming from the decline of two long-monopolized government services: road maintenance and mail delivery. Though they may seem like monolithic enterprises, in actuality there are lots of competing stakeholders. In many cases, these systems represent microcosms of dysfunction…
Read MoreRendering real-time
By Jon McClure @JonRMcClure What is real-time anyway? The Guardian’s Alastair Dant discussed the concept in terms of a continuous feed of information and provided a few tips on how journalists should approach it during “Dealing with real-time data.” Chaos is raw real-time data, Dant said. To render it journalists must first conceptualize the continuous…
Read MoreMoving a story beyond the data dump
By Hilary Niles @nilesmedia Some of the pithier annectdotes from this year’s conference surely belong to Tony DeBarros, Ron Nixon and Ben Welsh, for their presentations during “Making sure you tell a story.” Their three presentations, in rapid succession, covered ground from story craft to news strategy to robotics, and still managed to present a…
Read MoreYear in CAR
By Jessica Pupovac@jessicapupovac IRE Executive Director Mark Horvit and training director Megan Luther led a whirlwind tour of 25 data-driven stories during their “Year in CAR 2011” presentation, paying special attention to those projects that reporters can and should attempt to “do at home.” Highlights in the “do-it-yourself” category included: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s piece on…
Read MoreFighting for open records in Spain
By Hilary Niles @nilesmedia Spain is an “information black hole,” journalist Mar Cabra said during the Against All -Spanish- Odds. She and software developer David Cabo are taking suggestions on how to fix that. Among the European countries with a population more than 1 million, Cabra said, Spain is the only one not to have…
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