Hello, everyone. Greetings from a quick stopover in a busy day in the AP DC bureau, which I’m using for its nice air conditioning, plus a quick update. I just gave a session at the Society for Professional Journalists’ JournCamp here in DC. I was delighted to get to try out a session idea that’s been percolating in my head for a while — adopting a data set of mind with an understanding of structured data, to try to get more clarity on how data journalism can inform reporting. That is, NOT focusing on interactives and data visualizations. It’s about the philosophies, not the tools.
In my mind, this starts with some willing volunteers entering information on a spreadsheet. Data validation and structure errors surface, as with real data, and the session starts off with the bang.
It seemed to go pretty well, so all in a day’s work of paying The Mission forward.
Here’s a Storify of things people tweeted about the talk:
And a handout with links I used, and some further resources.
If you have feedback (praise or constructive), please don’t hesitate to let me know. Also, always happy to answer questions on this.