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Posts Tagged ‘data’
Report on the student debt crisis with our new simplified database
Student debt is quickly becoming a national crisis. But reporting on student loans and college finances has always been thorny, especially when dealing with complicated bureaucracies and patchwork data. Earlier this year, for the first time ever, the Obama Administration released a comprehensive intersection of student population, college performance and “outcome” data, measuring with precise…
Read MoreTips for putting a human face on your data-driven story
By Soo Rin Kim There’s nothing more boring and unappealing than seeing a story full of numbers. “But it’s a data story,” you say. “I can’t help it!” Put aside your excuses. Data stories can be and always have been human stories. Mc Nelly Torres of NBC6 Miami, Andrew Lehren of the New York Times…
Read MoreBroadcast journalists share tips for bringing numbers to life on TV
Investigative broadcast journalists across the country gathered at the 2016 CAR Conference and shared some of their secrets for bringing data to life on TV. 1. Get raw data KXAS-TV producer Eva Parks explained how her team requested complaint and violation records concerning noise at the Dallas Love Field airport. Unfortunately, the city of Dallas…
Read More10 free tools to help you clean, analyze and visualize data
Freelance journalist Samantha Sunne and Helena Bengtsson, data projects editor for The Guardian, spent an hour at the 2016 CAR Conference going over free, open-source tools that can replace expensive data cleaning, analysis and visualization programs. Here are some of my favorite tools the speakers mentioned: 1. Google Sheets Google Sheets is a widely known…
Read MoreHow to turn data into compelling audio and video
By Maggie Angst For journalists working with audio or video, it can sometimes be challenging to find the best way to display data in story. Joe Wertz, an environment and energy reporter for StateImpact Oklahoma, emphasized that although we really want a character to tell a story, sometimes the data can be the character. For…
Read MoreJournalists share data projects you can try anywhere
By Jinghong Chen During a session at the 2016 CAR Conference, Kevin Crowe of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Jamie Grey of KOMU-Columbia shared tips and data projects that journalists everywhere can try. 1. Infrastructure Crowe said that people in lots of places, especially aging cities, are worried about potholes, water main breaks and pavement…
Read MoreStrategies for getting the data and documents you need
By Quint Forgey In our seemingly endless quest to obtain government documents, it’s important to recognize and alleviate the often tense relationships between reporters and public information officers. During Friday’s panel discussion, “They’ve got it, you want it: Getting data and docs,” Rich Orman, senior deputy district attorney of Colorado’s 18th Judicial District, said bureaucrats…
Read MoreHumanizing data: Finding the people behind the numbers
By Maggie Angst As a data journalist, it’s easy to get immersed in a database and forget the groups and individuals who are affected by the data in the story. Data can be expansive and intriguing, but what matters most is explaining its real-world impact and relevance on specific people and communities, according to panelists…
Read MoreRegister for special training Wednesday at the CAR Conference
Start your 2016 CAR Conference a day early to take advantage of some special training opportunities from our partners. Reveal/The Center for Investigative Reporting will once again offer “Techraking <=16: Bootstrapping the News,” a popular workshop that helps attendees set up their computers to take advantage of all the tools they’ll be learning about…
Read MoreSubscribe to NICAR-Learn, our gallery of on-demand training videos
In November, we announced the creation of NICAR-Learn, a new hub for on-demand training videos. We launched the site with a handful of free videos, and now we’re excited to let you know that the full site is up and running. Here’s how it works: For a small fee ($25/year for IRE members; $40/year for non-members),…
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