“Data journalism is a trendy thing… But it is not a new thing” – Alex Howard, fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School Yesterday the Columbia Journalism School hosted a day-long talk on: “Quantifying Journalism: Metrics, Data and Composition”, which streamed live on YouTube. In one talk by Alex Howard, he … Continue reading
Sometimes when you open a spreadsheet, the data is not exactly laid out how you expect it to be. This means that you have to clean the dataset before you can use it. Here’s my tutorial on the five most commons ways to clean a dirty dataset: 1) Removing extra white space from cells Sometimes cells may … Continue reading
This tutorial will show you: The basics of using OutWit Hub to scrape data (I posted a full tutorial on this here) How to get the longitude and latitude from postcodes using a Post Code API and Open Refine (previously known as Google Refine). For part of my data journalism project, I wanted to scrape The … Continue reading
Conceptions by under-18s are at the lowest level since 1969, new data released today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveals. The number of conceptions by under-18s in 2012 stands at 27.9 conceptions per 1,000 women. This means that in total there were 27,834 conceptions by under-18s in 2012. Let’s look at how this compares … Continue reading
As part of my Online Journalism module at City University London, run by Paul Bradshaw, I co-manage a literacy blog called Reading for London. I wanted to create a map of every reading group in London as a useful resource for our readers. A website called Reading Groups for Everyone lists every reading group in … Continue reading
In December I was very pleased to have the results of my FOI project, part of my MA at City University, published in The Mail on Sunday. I sent a Freedom of Information request to the British Transport Police requesting data regarding crime on the tube, trains, and stations all across London. The finished piece … Continue reading
I recently watched Hans Rosling’s programme “Don’t Panic – the Truth about Population”, where he tries to “make sense” of the population crisis. As he says: “I’m a statistician! No! Don’t switch off!” – ergo, data can be dull if it is not presented in the right way or if it simply cannot tell a … Continue reading
In our second class about social media with Adam Tinworth as part of my course in Interactive Journalism at City University London, I thought I’d research stock and flow concepts to get a better understanding of how they work. First of all, what is stock and flow content? The concept of stock and flow originated from economics. … Continue reading
The Guardian have recently launched their Guardian Witness service in collaboration with the mobile network EE. The service, available online and as an app for iPhone and Android, allows users to make their own contributions to certain assignments and even live blogs. The service also offers advice to contributors, such as a collaborative guide to … Continue reading
I was having a browse through Paul Bradshaw’s excellent Online Journalism blog when I stumbled across their Storify round up of the News:Rewired panel from December last year. Essentially, different digital journalists round up their views and discuss the best tools and methods for enhancing news stories. As a result of this, I made a … Continue reading
Sophie MM 