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Posts Tagged ‘NICAR’
Dashboards for reporting
Think of a data dashboard as a bird’s-eye view of data that gets automatically updated in real-time. It’s like a news app meant only for internal use, and the ultimate goal is to make repeat reporting processes more efficient. Aaron Bycoffe of The Huffington Post and Derek Williams and Jacob Harris of The New York…
Read MoreBeyond charts, making interactives fun
Fun does not equal fluff. Spice up data viz and you can “take a wonky topic and personalize it,” said Tasneem Raja of Mother Jones in the “Making interactives fun” session. Also, fun interactives build your credibility for the hard-nosed investigations down the line. When readers see how you deftly handle dog license data they…
Read MorePhotos from ‘A night on the town’
A CAR conference atendee throws a ball down the lane on Thursday night in Louisville. Photo by Travis Hartman, IRE/NICAR. Stephanie Peuriere from Strasbourg University bowls at the after hours bowling event on Thursday night in Louisville. Photo by Travis Hartman, IRE/NICAR.
Read MoreData Viz on the fly
John Keefe of WNYC said anticipate question before your audiences asks them. Is a hurricane headed my way? Am I in a flood zone? Preparing for an emergency should happen before the storm sirens start blaring. The same goes for your data visualizations, Keefe said. His newsrooms uses Google Fusion tables, Mapbox and Google Spreadsheets…
Read MoreIntegrity checks and simple data cleaning – the art of doubt
There is a saying about software engineering that could easily be applied to formatting data. The truism goes something like, “it’s like looking for black cats in a dark room that has no cats in it.” And then, someone yells, ‘I got one!’” Well, Joe Kokenge of ProPublica is practicing animal control. His presentation on…
Read MoreData viz on a shoestring
The plethora of data visualization tools available these days creates a high-quality problem: a lack of resources to create visualizations becomes a hard task of choosing which of the many to use. Sharon Machlis of Computerworld offers a rapid-fire, well organized and nearly comprehensive inventory of data visualization tools that can be deployed for little…
Read MoreBeware of data – cautionary tips and tales of statistics
A nine year-old girl was beaten to death by her foster brother in Kentucky, but the tragedy did not become a statistic. The state agency in charge of counting abused children didn’t categorize it as a death, attorney Jon Fleischaker said in the “Legal issues, access and big data” session. Local and state government goes…
Read MoreInspect This: The many uses of inspection data
Take a ride to understand inspection data. Megan Luther of IRE said. Buckle up next to an inspector and get to know their world: how often they inspect, how do they do it? How often? Do they inspect everyone on a set timeline, or just the new kids on the block? What is the inspection…
Read MoreMaking the best use of the conference
IRE executive director Mark Horvit and training directors Jaimi Dowdell and Megan Luther offered advice this morning for how to make the best use of the conference. For first-time attendees, here are a few basic things to keep in mind: There are three types of sessions: panels, demos and hands-on rooms. Panels follow a fairly…
Read MoreAdvanced social media sleuthing
Geolocation tools help you search for social media activity buzzing in your beat, on your block and even in your building. The following tools help you search by geolocation information embedded in tweets, Facebook updates, youtube videos and more. “Geolocation is one of the most exciting things for journalists out in the field,” presenter Doug…
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