CAR Conference Blog
Data on the radio: How to turn numbers into characters in your story
By Anadil Iftekhar Data is boring. Numbers are confusing. Limit them, hide them, focus more on people. Haven’t you been hearing this a lot lately? “We are here to say you shouldn’t do that,” said Will Craft. Craft and his colleague, Madeleine Baran, work at American Public Media. In a 2017 CAR Conference panel, they…
Read MoreHow to bulletproof your data story
By Shane Sanderson When the Palm Beach Post obtained a spreadsheet made by a clerical worker at the local medical examiner’s office, reporters had to verify it. The office worker had noticed an escalation in the number of overdose deaths and she began a project recording the details. The resulting spreadsheet had something like 100…
Read MoreTips for building smart, clean spreadsheets
By Amanda Nero Sandhya Kambhampati, most recently a Knight-Mozilla fellow working in Berlin, Germany, helped CAR Conference attendees turn mediocre spreadsheets into ready-to-use data for analysis. Kambhampati took attendees through the dos and dont’s of formatting data in Excel. The session focused on the top errors she and her colleagues have run across in newsrooms…
Read MoreHow to find and use housing data
By Haotian Mai “It’s a fascinating time to be studying housing,” said Skylar Olsen, a senior economist from Zillow. On Thursday, Olsen sat on a housing data panel with Tim Henderson, a demographics writer and data analyst for Stateline, at the 2017 CAR Conference. For companies like Zillow, housing data fuels their services. For homeowners,…
Read MoreHow journalists can distill wide, complicated data
By Dariya Tsyrenzhapova How do journalists make sense out of the abundance of data out there? Are medians and averages actually accurate representations of reality? What are the best ways to improve your storytelling with numbers? Larry Fenn, a data journalist with the Associated Press, Paul Overberg with the Wall Street Journal and Holly Hacker…
Read MorePlaying money ball: how to investigate sports institutions
By Daniel Levitt Sports data often gets overlooked as a source of investigative stories. But Steve Doig of Arizona State University and Paula Lavigne of ESPN showed journalists that we can – and should – hold sports organizations accountable. Both Doig and Lavigne entered the sports journalism world from other beats. Doig covered science, education…
Read MoreHolding algorithms accountable
By Natalie Lung Algorithms play an increasingly prominent role in journalism, but we’ve been slow to scrutinize those algorithms like we would any other source. ProPublica senior reporter Julia Angwin, Stanford computer science Ph.D. candidate Sam Corbett-Davies, and Philip Merrill College of Journalism assistant professor Nick Diakopoulos shared their experience in evaluating algorithmic fairness at…
Read MoreIRE and NICAR to host rescued federal data directory
At our annual CAR conference in Jacksonville, IRE and NICAR announced initial steps to help save federal data that could disappear. Our hope is to help organize the efforts currently underway by journalists and concerned citizens. IRE and NICAR will host a central directory on our website to show submitted details on rescued data and…
Read MoreDownload the 2017 CAR Conference app
The 2017 CAR Conference app is now available through Guidebook! We encourage you to download our mobile guide to enhance your experience at the 2017 CAR Conference. You’ll be able to plan your day with a personalized schedule, browse maps and connect with other attendees. The app is free and compatible with iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches and Android…
Read MoreNICAR Daily Update | Thursday, March 2
Thank you to our hosts, The Florida Times-Union/Jacksonville.com and Morris Publishing Group, and our sponsors and supporters: Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, Google, Knight Foundation, Knight-Mozilla OpenNews, Lumina Foundation, and Missouri School of Journalism. Make sure to visit our exhibitors: Esri, Vigilant Web Inc., and Zillow. Their booths are located on the 3rd floor sky bridge. Looking…
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