I’ve written a post on the Help Me Investigate blog on a number of different ways to publish data online, from converting Excel spreadsheets into HTML tables, to using Google Docs, or using data-sharing platforms like BuzzData. You may find it useful.
Quite often when you’re looking for data as part of a story, that data will not be on a single page, but on a series of pages. To manually copy the data from each one – or even scrape the data individually – would take time. Here I explain a way to use Google Docs to grab the data for
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Previously I wrote on how to use the =importXML formula in Google Docs to pull information from an XML page into a conventional spreadsheet. In this Something For The Weekend post I’ll show how to take that formula further to grab information from webpages – and get updates when that information changes. Asking questions of a webpage – or find
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Here’s another Something for the Weekend post. Last week I wrote a post on how to use the =importFeed formula in Google Docs spreadsheets to pull an RSS feed (or part of one) into a spreadsheet, and split it into columns. Another formula which performs a similar function more powerfully is =importXML. There are at least 2 distinct journalistic uses
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During some training in open data I was doing recently, I ended up explaining (it’s a long story) how to pull a feed from Delicious into a Google Docs spreadsheet. I promised I would put it down online, so: here it is. In a Google Docs spreadsheet the formula =importfeed will pull information from an RSS feed and put it
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This is a draft from a book chapter on data journalism (here are parts 1; two; and three, which looks the charts side of visualisation). I’d really appreciate any additions or comments you can make – particularly around tips and tools. UPDATE: It has now been published in The Online Journalism Handbook. Visualisation tools So if you want to visualise some
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The Telegraph have finally published their MPs’ expenses data online – and it’s worth the wait. Here are some initial thoughts and reactions: Firstly, they’ve made user behaviour an editorial feature. In plain English: they’re showing the most searched-for MPs and constituencies, which is not only potentially interesting in itself, but also makes it easier for the majority of users
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This post by Tony Hirst should be recommended reading for every journalist interested in the potential of computers for reporting. Why? Because it shows you how you can use Google spreadsheets to interrogate data as if it was a database; and because it demonstrates the importance of news organisations releasing data to their users. Put aside any intimidation you might
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