Events and Training » 2016 CAR Conference » Risks and rewards of rolling ...

2016 CAR Conference

Risks and rewards of rolling your own criminal justice data

  • Event: 2016 CAR Conference
  • Speakers: Gabriel Dance, Kenan Davis, Steven Rich, Jodi Upton, Tom Meagher
  • Date/Time: Friday, March 11 at 3:30 p.m.
  • Location: Denver III & IV
  • Audio file: Only members can listen to conference audio

**Moderated by Tom Meagher, The Marshall Project

Over the past year and a half, criminal justice has risen to the top of the national conversation in a way it hasn’t for decades. Yet even as public and open data in many areas have improved, we’ve found that in criminal justice the data is as bad as it’s ever been. In this session, journalists from four news organizations — The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA TODAY and The Marshall Project — will talk about how (and why) they built their own databases to fill the gaps and what they learned in the process.

Speakers

    Gabriel Dance is a managing editor of The Marshall Project, an online nonprofit covering the justice system. Dance began his career at The New York Times, eventually serving as chief multimedia producer. As the interactive editor for The Guardian, he was part of a group of journalists who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of widespread secret surveillance by the NSA. 

    Kenan Davis is head of interactive at The Guardian US. @kenandavis

    Steven Rich is the database editor for investigations at The Washington Post. He's worked on investigations probing the National Security Agency, tax lien sales, asset forfeiture, police shootings and college athletics. He has been a reporter on two teams awarded Pulitzer Prizes, in 2014 for Public Service and in 2016 for National Reporting. Steven is a graduate of Mizzou and Virginia Tech. He was elected to IRE’s Board of Directors in 2015. @dataeditor

    Jodi Upton is the Senior Database Editor at USA TODAY, where she leads the database team in analysis on stories from mass killings to Medicare fraud to football coach contracts. Her team supports breaking news, investigative projects and data-driven interactives. She was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University and is a visiting scholar at Indiana University’s National Sports Journalism Center. Her team has won many U.S. and international awards for their work. Jodi was named the Knight Chair in Data and Explanatory Journalism at Syracuse University starting fall 2016.@jodiupton

    Tom Meagher is deputy managing editor at The Marshall Project, where he undertakes data-driven reporting on policing, prison rape, the death penalty and other criminal justice issues. He's part of the team there behind "The Next To Die," a project examining and tracking executions in 10 states. A veteran reporter and editor, he previously led an interactive team for the Digital First Media newspaper chain and was the data editor at the Newark Star-Ledger. @ultracasual

Related Tipsheets

  • Risks and rewards of rolling your own criminal justice data
    Over the past year and a half, criminal justice has risen to the top of the national conversation in a way it hasn’t for decades. Yet even as public and open data in many areas have improved, we’ve found that in criminal justice the data is as bad as it’s ever been. In this tipsheet, journalists from four news organizations — The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA TODAY and The Marshall Project — will talk about how (and why) they built their own databases to fill the gaps and what they learned in the process.

  • Risks and Rewards of Rolling Your Own Criminal Justice Data
    Over the past year and a half, criminal justice has risen to the top of the national conversation in a way it hasn’t for decades. Yet even as public and open data in many areas have improved, we’ve found that in criminal justice the data is as bad as it’s ever been. In this PowerPoint presentation, journalists from four news organizations — The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA TODAY and The Marshall Project — will talk about how (and why) they built their own databases to fill the gaps and what they learned in the process.

  • Risks and rewards of rolling your own criminal justice data
    These slides and tipsheet introduce top-class criminal justice projects and give tips on how to build your own criminal justice database. https://github.com/tommeagher/cjcar16/blob/master/README.md