Posts Tagged ‘Conference’

“When I first attended the annual conference of the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR) in 2012, it was as a speaker,” writes Alexander Howard, a Tow Fellow at Columbia Journalism School’s center for digital journalism innovation.  “I was there to give a short talk about new data coming from the open governent movement. While it went well,…

By Kimberly Fields Tor Ekeland, an attorney who represents defendants in federal prosecutions under the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act; Scott Klein, senior editor of news applications at ProPublica; and Isaac Wolf, a national reporter for Scripps News, talked about the ethical issues surrounding web scraping during the session “Hacks or Hackers?” Here are some…

By Brittany Collins Michael Pell, a reporter on the Reuters data team in New York, and Joce Sterman, an investigative reporter for WMAR-Baltimore, showed journalists at the 2014 CAR Conference how to mine inspection reports for data. Several departments hold inspection documents, Sterman said. Local health departments keep inspection files on restaurants, schools, airport facilities,…

By Mariya Moseley Nikole Hannah-Jones, ProPublica; Lawrence Lanahan, an independent journalist working in Baltimore; and Steve Doig, Arizona State University, shared tips and resources for investigating racial inequality during a session at the 2014 CAR Conference in Baltimore. Lanahan, who launched a year-long multimedia examination of regional inequality, offered three steps for beginning the investigation process: Get…

By Ariana Giorgi One of the best ways to start your own data story is to learn what worked – or didn’t work – for other journalists. Three pros took NICAR attendees behind their data-driven projects as part of “Data Deep Dives.”   Speeding Cops | John Maines, Sun Sentinel John Maines presented his story…

By Anna Boiko-Weyrauch Policy fellows from the American Association for the Advancement of Science took the audience on a tour of techniques they use in their work and presented some tips on how to interact better with experts in various scientific fields during the Saturday session, “A quick trip through data in the sciences.” Carolyn Lauzon presented a…

By Tim Sandoval Reporters who’ve used Microsoft Excel for a story know that analysis doesn’t begin until the data has been cleaned. Spreadsheets provided by governments or other entities are often not formatted the way reporters would like. Some agencies format the data in confusing ways, or do problematic things like spell words incorrectly in…

By Irina Ivanova Census tips for every beat from IRE/NICAR on Vimeo. We all know the census contains data, but getting just the data you want out of it can be tricky. Paul Overberg and Ronald Campbell know this. Campbell used to call American Fact Finder “the tool of the devil” (though today only about…

By Karim Lahlou Journalists Julie Tate, The Washington Post, Rick Yarborough, NBC Washington, shared tips on how to locate sources using a combination of online and offline resources. Whether you’re looking for a source’s location, criminal history, or election contributions, the following list they’ve compiled is more than enough to get started. Get the link…

By Tyler Fisher Many NICAR sessions feature journalists telling other journalists how they can improve their lives and work. On Thursday, Ben Balter from GitHub made a pitch to journalists from the outside: Become familiar with git and GitHub and you’ll be able to make better products on the web. Balter said his goal was…