Britain does a great job of opening its data, except for what journalists really want

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Fighting with inflatable hammers? Image by Joe Shlabotnik. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Journalist SA Mathieson has used open data in Britain to put together an impressive new ebook. In a guest post for OJB he looks at the country’s strengths when it comes to open data — and the problems still facing journalists who want to see how the public’s money is spent.

It is tough for a British journalist to admit that their government does something well, but here goes: when it comes to openly releasing data, Great Britain (in other words England, Scotland and Wales) is second only to Taiwan according to the Global Open Data Index.

Westminster gets maximum marks for releasing data on the government’s budget, national statistics, administrative boundaries, national maps, air quality and company registers. Continue reading →

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2018 has been a good year for UK local data journalism — here’s the story so far

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Local data journalism in the UK has been undergoing a quiet revolution in the last 12 months, but 2018 in particular has seen a number of landmarks already in its first few months. Here’s some of the highlights in just its first 12 and a half weeks…

January: BBC Shared Data Unit publishes its first secondee-led investigation

The BBC Shared Data Unit had already been producing stories before in late 2017 it took on its first three-month secondees from the news industry. Over the next 12 weeks they received training in data journalism and work on a joint investigation. Continue reading →

FAQ: Is UGC more helpful or harmful to journalism?

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The latest set of questions in the semi-regular FAQ section on this blog are about UGC, and come from a student at Liverpool John Moores. Here they are…

Is UGC more helpful or harmful to journalism?

Helpful, of course! Journalism has always relied on information and media (photos, video, audio) from readers/the audience and sources. The difference is that we now have access to a much larger amount of that information. Continue reading →

“I tried to deal with numbers as professionally as I could. But behind them there were people, and I couldn’t run away from it” — Ferran Morales on visualising refugee data

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In a guest post for OJB Maria Crosas interviews Ferran Morales, the journalist behind The Story of Zainab, to understand how he tackled the challenge of processing and visualising data about refugees.

ferran

Ferran Morales showing infographics from Zainab’ story

Ferran Morales is a data journalist and graphic designer at El Mundo Deportivo. In February, with the team at Media Lab Prado, he published The Story of Zainab, a data-driven narrative following an 11-year-old refugee and her family, that had to leave their home in 2011 because of the war in Syria.

The project was created as part of Visualizar 2017, a workshop for prototyping data visualisation projects, and drew on data on refugees.

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On International Women’s Day here are 7 data journalism projects about women’s issues

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Photo: Pixabay

Women represent 49.5% of the world’s population, but they do not have a corresponding public, political and social influence. In recent years, more and more women have raised their voices, making society aware of their challenges — data journalists included. To commemorate International Women’s Day, Carla Pedret presents a list of data journalism projects that detail the sacrifices, injustices and prejudices that women still have to face in the 21st century.

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3 weeks left to enter the Data Journalism Awards

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maidan revolution map

One of the projects from last year’s winning portfolio in the young data journalist category

The deadline for the Data Journalism Awards is now just 3 weeks away. One category for educators and young journalists to look out for is the ‘Student and young data journalist of the year‘ which seeks to shine a light “the outstanding work of a new talent in data journalism, for projects done while they are still studying or early in their professional careers.”

The category is open to all data journalists under the age of 27 — but not students over that age (who I’m told should apply for the Best Individual Portfolio category). Submissions can include one or as many as ten pieces of data journalism. Winners get $1801 (the year William Playfair reportedly created the pie chart) and a trophy.

Last year’s winner Yaryna Serkez won for a portfolio that included a reconstruction of the last three days of the Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan revolution, the Snow Fall-esque “Anatomy of the Carpathians“, and a network analysis of pro-Russian trolls on Facebook in Ukraine.

There are also some new categories: Innovation in data journalism, and Best data journalism team. More on the website.

 

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Text-as-data journalism? Highlights from a decade of SOTU speech coverage

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January 2012: The National Post’s graphics team analyzes keywords used in State of the Union addresses by presidents Bush and Obama / Image: © Richard Johnson/The National Post

January 2012: The National Post’s graphics team analyzes keywords used in State of the Union addresses by presidents Bush and Obama / Image: © Richard Johnson/The National Post

In a guest post for OJB, Barbara Maseda looks at how the media has used text-as-data to cover State of the Union addresses over the last decade.

State of the Union (SOTU) addresses are amply covered by the media —from traditional news reports and full transcripts, to summaries and highlights. But like other events involving speeches, SOTU addresses are also analyzable using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to identify and extract newsworthy patterns.

Every year, a new speech is added to this small collection of texts, which some newsrooms process to add a fresh angle to the avalanche of coverage.

Continue reading →