I would extend the concept of “data journalist” to include “citizen analyst”. Like the blogosphere inflection, a new era is upon us that will combine the skills of data analysts and journalists — individuals or loosely coupled cooperatives on the InterWeb devoid of any geographic boundaries.

Help me remind your colleagues in the newspaper business that: they have always been database curators, so the model tweak comes down to dispatching up they value via high fidelity Linked Data Spaces rather than Paper Cups

The hack is getting a major fix!

Kingsley

I shared a podium with Adrian in 2005 at the National Press Club in DC for the Batten Awards. He won, I was runner up and had my first chance to see how transformative grabbing raw data and finding a visual methodology could be highly interpretive.

It’s not that we hadn’t seen the use of data-interpreted graphics; I’m still haunted by Newsweek’s illustration of the Neutron bomb from the 80s. But here, now, the numbers empirically wrote the story, avoiding the use of good judgment guesswork.

The FOI in the UK, notwithstanding individual investigative work, should as you allude to provide the data, but as the recipient devising a tangible and measurable way might, I believe, be an issue for a while.

Primarily, in concurring, that journalism is not a vocation/career that traditionally draws in programmers or those with statistical data reading skills. I have probably counted a handful on courses I have been privy to.

Granted my degree was a while ago, but as an Applied Chemist in a room full of Lit grads? You can see why the Adrians are special.

You probably have your own tales of what it can sometimes be like, getting students to set up a blog. Though that’s changing with some uni courses mooting (and doing??) the idea of computing and journalism

But I believe the market place will pick up this challenge, not least because there’s revenue. So just as bespoke templates for blogs, Apps etc. have become available eschewing any dense or even scripting language from the user, there may well be a simplification of the data-in; decipherable info-out to cause a melting point.

The availability of the Ushahidi platform veers towards that example.

In your journeys though I wonder what your feedback has been talking to editors to allow programmers et al, nominally the techs upstairs, to share the same space as journalists from the get-go including editorial meetings.

My experience is it happens sparingly; request forms still the norm.
And that once an outfit undertakes drilling data it provides a level of transparency and sourcing for others to interrogate at will.

I guess guide lines are still be drawn up.

Happy days

Cheers David
ps Had a good natter with George (City) today when your name cropped up