Learn to love the data

By On January 14, 2010 · 5 Comments

Numbers aren’t sexy, they are sometimes difficult, sometimes wrong (if they get inputted incorrectly) but they are to be treated with respect – and well worth having a conversation with.

Your readers/viewers might not want to see a data table full of figures – so you can use tools like Many Eyes Wikified to visualise them….

Highlight of the day at News:Rewired (at least as far as I’m concerned) was the data mashing session with the OU’s Tony Hirst and Francis Irving from My Society.

I’ve been looking at how to mash data, picking up ideas which have led me to start looking at Access, JSON, Python and Django (depending on what day of the week it is and the latest thing to fly across my social networks).

One of the great things was how the worked as a pair – Tony on how to do in-browser mashing using datasets (like Guardian datasets), get them into a Google Docs spreadsheet in a machine-readable format and then use Yahoo Pipes to clean, create your own bespoke search tools and then export the results to other tools such as Google Maps.

Sounds scary – well the language of IT can sound like that. But pleasantly for most people (after the initial shock of being an a room with two knowledgable people, and Tony introducing himself as a lecturer in telematics) this is something doable by people with a brain rather than hard core tech skills.

Lots of similarity to some of the visualisations created by CAR, but this was open and networked tools rather than closed in Excel/Access stuff. Okay, that means that other people can see your raw data and could potentially get the story – but as Tony pointed out over a beer, it will improve your network by attracting experts. A good return on investment as it builds your reputation – not all editors may understand that important lesson though.

Not every journalist is going to want to do this, but we don’t all do the same things at the moment anyway. But again, as people found with journalism and technology-related skills, if you are getting it then you could be ahead of the game.

If you are interested, look at the presentation posted by Tony.

Check out the buzz from News:Rewired

If you are interested in the raw material from News:rewired, then have a look at journalism.co.uk’s News:Rewired buzz page

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  • kevinmatthews

    As a journalist who works with data and the digital side of things, all this sounds very exciting.
    What these techie blokes are doing is the new journalism. Journalists can no longer afford to be afraid – or even sniffy – about rolling their sleeves up and getting down and techie.

  • http://quixoticquisling.com Carl Morris

    It's interesting that you point to the likelihood of other people getting your scoop as a problem.

    I wonder if you can draw parallels with what happens in open source software. That is, what was once expensive to develop or buy can now be downloaded and adapted for free – and freely. The outcome is that companies have to move “up the value chain” – like companies offering more tailored services (like Red Hat) or hosted, hassle-free services (WordPress.com). In both cases, the underlying software is also available as a free by-product for those with time.

    So on the “tailored” side maybe it's less about the scoop as a journalist/news org and more about what you can offer that's distinctive. The same story about, say, a link between cannabis use and emotional levels on a map is always going to play out differently in The Independent as compared to the Daily Mail, etc.

    I don't know what the news equivalent of “hassle-free hosted services” is, maybe it's an easier version of Yahoo Pipes where you don't need to know regex! Maybe it's a whole load of those small apps that relate the data to the visitor, like the annual budget calculator or the BNP hot spot map.

    Online news tends to get rid of exclusives anyway, even if the pay wall were to work the competition can rush out a copy of your story! Maybe you assume that's the case and work with them along lines where you don't compete.

    Open source tends to raise the game for everyone…

    It allows a wide variety of people to patch up bugs. Maybe it's akin to the experts to which Tony refers helping with your fact checking – as well as bloggers and other “amateurs” who can contribute to your overall story.

    Open source isn't a perfect analogy because I'm not sure that data can be copyrighted, therefore you cannot have licences like GPL.

    Just a few thoughts, I may have got some of journalism terminology wrong. You probably hate being called a “hack”, but maybe the term will be ever more apt…

  • http://www.egrommet.net egrommet

    I agree, and one of the most interesting things Tony said was that his way of doing this is a 15 minute in browser session. Now admittedly it will take the rest of us a lot longer to get to that stage, but I find that very encouraging.

  • http://www.egrommet.net egrommet

    Hi Carl – you are right. The reason I flagged this up was in the last line

    >>A good return on investment as it builds your reputation – not all editors may understand that important lesson though.<<

    Editors will not often want to publish a story that someone else (that's the old school way of working). What I was trying to say was that there are other ways of your work making an impact, and different outcomes for it.

    I think your point about open source journalism is very interesting and appropriate.

    I wasn't talking about exclusives, merely reporting a converstion with Tony about a colleague I know who lost a story as a result of open sourcing. They did all the digging and the FOI to uncover it and then someone else used it. They didn't even get the credit.

    And as for the community being involved in improving info and developing stories – dead right. That is exactly what should be happening.

    And as for the term hack – yup I love it. I'm a hack learning to hack. :D

  • Pingback: Data mashing presentation from @psychemedia at News:Rewired : The (e)Grommet

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