Jod ads come and go, so I thought I’d capture the main elements of this one from the BBC: Data Journalist – Role Purpose and Aims You will be required to humanize statistics; to make sense of potentially complicated data and present it in a user friendly format. You will be asked to focus on … Continue reading “What is a Data Journalist?”
You may or may not have noticed that the Boundary Commission released their take on proposed parliamentary constituency boundaries today. They could have released the data – as data – in the form of shape files that can be rendered at the click of a button in things like Google Maps… but they didn’t… [The … Continue reading “Data Journalists Engaging in Co-Innovation…”
Picking up on Paul Bradshaw’s post A quick exercise for aspiring data journalists which hints at how you can use Google Spreadsheets to grab – and explore – a mortality dataset highlighted by Ben Goldacre in DIY statistical analysis: experience the thrill of touching real data, I thought I’d describe a quick way of analysing … Continue reading “Power Tools for Aspiring Data Journalists: Funnel Plots in R”
If part of the role of data journalism is to make transparent the justification behind claims that are, or aren’t, backed up by data, there’s good reason to suppose that the journalists should be able to back up their own data-based claims with evidence about how they made use of the data. Posting links to … Continue reading “How Might Data Journalists Show Their Working? Sweave”
One of the things that I’ve been pondering lately is how I increasingly read the news in a “View Source”* frame of mind, wanting to look behind news stories as reported to read the actual survey report, press release, or Hansard report they take their lead from (more from this in a future post…) – … Continue reading “Press Releases and Convenient Report Publication Formats for Data Journalists”
As well as serendipity, I believe in confluence… A headline in the Press Gazette declares that Trinity Mirror will be roll[ing] out five templates across 130-plus regional newspapers as emphasis moves to digital. Apparently, this follows a similar initiative by Johnston Press midway through last year: Johnston to roll out five templates for network of … Continue reading “Local News Templates – A Business Opportunity for Data Journalists?”
A quick snapshot of how the data journalism scene is evolving at the moment based on job ads over the last few months… Via mediauk, I’m not sure when this post for a Junior Data Journalist, Trinity Mirror Regionals (Manchester) was advertised (maybe it was for its new digital journalism unit?)? Here’s what they were … Continue reading “So what is a data journalist exactly? A view from the job ads…”
Every so often I do a round up of job openings in different areas. This is particular true around year end, as I look at my dwindling salary (no more increments, ever, and no hope of promotion, …) and my overall lack of direction, and try to come up with sort sort of resolution to … Continue reading “So You Want to be a Data Journalist? Current Opportunities”
A quick peek at a couple of recent job ads that describe what you might be expected to do… From the BBC – Senior Data Journalist. In part, the role responsibilities include: generating ideas for data-driven stories and for how they might be developed and visualized exploring those ideas using statistical tools – and presenting … Continue reading “Responsibilities and Required Skills in Recent “Data Journalist” Job ads…”
Last week, the COI (Central Office of Information) released a report on the “websites run by ministerial and non-ministerial government departments”, detailing visitor numbers, costs, satisfaction levels and so on, in accordance with COI standards on guidance on website reporting (Reporting on progress: Central Government websites 2009-10). As well as the print/PDF summary report (Reporting … Continue reading “So Where Do the Numbers in Government Reports Come From?”
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