I’m stopping Help Me Investigate, my collaborative investigation project. It’s time to rip it up and start again.
This year has seen the launch of a number of impressive crowdfunded and crowdsourced projects on platforms including Beacon and Contributoria – plus OpenCorporates Missions and the enormously impressive Bellingcat. Their rise, for me, confirms that there is no longer a need for the original mission that Help Me Investigate took on way back in 2009. Continue reading
Over on the Help Me Investigate Blog there’s a review of the project’s activities over the past year across its four sites: Health, Olympics, Education and Welfare.
Four site editors landed jobs in the media during the year, which was particularly nice to see, but also meant we lost a certain amount of continuity. Learning from that, this year I’ll be focusing the project’s efforts particularly on welfare issues such as child poverty, housing, food poverty, and the one year anniversary of the bedroom tax.
If you want to get involved, please contact carol@helpmeinvestigate.com or tweet us for a follow on Twitter @carolmiers and @paulbradshaw.
If you’re interested in doing data journalism in or about Scotland there’s a post over on the Help Me Investigate blog rounding up a number of useful sources (I collected them as part of some two-day data journalism training sessions I have been delivering within a Scottish newspaper publisher). Continue reading
If you’re interested in leaks, surveillance or FOI, three book reviews I wrote over the last two months on the Help Me Investigate blog recently might interest you:
You may have noticed that I’ve moved/redirected Online Journalism Blog back to its old place on WordPress.com. This is to give it a reliable hosting place while I move web host (open to recommendations – apart from GoDaddy, which is the host I am leaving) and possibly platform (I’m hoping Ghost will be available soon enough to move to that).
Although I have copied across some content, many of the posts from 2008 (when I left WordPress.com) are not on this site. If you are looking for a post that isn’t here, please do the following:
Meanwhile, most of my blogging will be done over at the Help Me Investigate Blog.
I’ve pulled together a collection of research, posts, book chapters, interviews, case studies and other material documenting the process of running Help Me Investigate for anyone writing a research paper or wishing to ask questions about the site. I hope it’s useful.
There’s an interview with me in both Spanish and English at Mas Investigacion covering a number of questions about data journalism, Help Me Investigate, MOOCs, and teaching.
Although the introduction is in Spanish, scroll down and click on ‘Read the interview in English’ if you want that version.
Over on the Help Me Investigate blog I’ve published a guide to extracting data from council budget reports. Very timely, you see. Let me know what you do with it.
Sid Ryan’s planning applications map
Sid Ryan wanted to see if planning applications near planning committee members were more or less likely to be accepted. In two guest posts on Help Me Investigate he shows how to research people online (in this case the councillors), and how to map planning applications to identify potential relationships.
The posts take in a range of techniques including:
If you find it useful, please let me know – and if you can add anything… please do.
![Behind the Numbers - Birmingham's regional datablog](https://i0.wp.com/i4.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/article1285445.ece/ALTERNATES/s298/restaurant-map700.jpg")
I’ve been working recently with the Birmingham Mail to launch Behind The Numbers, a new datablog project with Birmingham City University supported by Help Me Investigate. I’m told that it is probably the UK’s first regional newspaper datablog, although whether that’s a meaningful claim is debatable*.
The first story generated by the project – what is the worst time to be seen at A&E – was published in the newspaper a week ago. But it’s what happens next that’s going to be interesting. Continue reading
Online Journalism Blog 