Data in the newsroom – How it works in the newsroom – How StatsNZ data fits into our work

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Data in the newsroom – How it works in the newsroom – How StatsNZ data fits into our work

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stats_nz

presentation at StatisticsNZ on data journalism

On Github kamal-hothi / stats_nz

Data in the newsroom

Harkanwal Singh (@kamal_hothi)

In late 2011, at the Waikato Times...

Data what?

Most FAQ in and outside the newsroom

Q. So, what do you actually do?

A. Let me show you

How data journalism came about

Or, the rise of the nerds in the newsroom
  • Philip Meyers - Precision Journalism
  • Tim Berners Lee in 2010
  • Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight
  • News applications
  • Data visualisation
  • Columbia Journalism School's Lede Program

In New Zealand

A personal journey

Getting hired as 'data journalist' at Stuff.co.nz, then moving to the Herald and creating a 'data editor' role

The importance of community - learning from Keith Ng, Thomas Lumley, Chris McDowall, and so many others

Reader driven journalism - being responsive and responsible

How it works in the newsroom

Or, unreasonable aspirations of unreasonable people

How StatsNZ data fits into our work

Or, why this is kind of like visiting the mothership

Crowdsourcing how you can help us even more

Firstly, before we complain, or ask for more...

@kamal_hothi Thank you for the free data! It goes unsaid, but the effort is appreciated.

— Andrew Chen (@andrewmeows) August 4, 2015

Here it goes...

If people honestly think, Excel is the future....well, then we're all in trouble

What your power users want

Or, people who almost never use Excel
  • Simplify the website
  • CSVs/APIs
  • Metadata
  • Persistent URLs
  • Don't put all the census data in one table
  • Visit W3C 'CSV on the web' page

Continued...

  • Cleaner, shorter column names...
  • Give the data, not the data vis..
  • Front-end evolves fast, even for news websites
  • It's hard to please everyone
  • A map of data landscape, please
  • Synthetic verion of microdata sets, for open release - no disclosure risk
Data in the newsroom Harkanwal Singh (@kamal_hothi)