SPECIAL THANKS TO: The followi wing individuals, f for sharing g - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

SPECIAL THANKS TO: The followi wing individuals, f for sharing g thei eir c consider erable knowled edge, , time and resources f for this pr presentation. Jim Ra Rankin Reporter/Photographer, The Toronto Star Fr Fred Val allan ance-Jones es Assistant Professor, Journalism, University of King’s College M. . Tyl yler Dukes Managing Editor, Reporters’ Lab

ABOUT ME I’m a graduate of Carleton University’s School of Journalism I’ve worked as a freelance journalist, copywriter and community manager over the past four years I’m a member of: Concatenate() is my favourite Excel function

ABOUT ME I r I recently:  Completed the Data Journalism Summer School Boot camp at the University of King’s College in Halifax, NS  Spent a month writing about Big Macs as part of Tribal DDB’s successful “Our Food. Your Questions” campaign for McDonald’s Canada

ABOUT ME I have freelanced for:

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION Two very important po points b before w we cont ntinue: 1. I am not a data journalism expert. 2. Canadian journalists currently do amazing data journalism work. We’re ‘far behind’ in terms of the institutionalism of data journalism in our newsrooms.

WHAT IS DATA JOURNALISM? Also known as Computer-Assisted Reporting, Computational Journalism, Data-driven journalism, etc. +

WHAT IS DATA JOURNALISM? “Data journalism is obtaining, reporting on, curating and publishing data in the public interest.” Jonathan Stray, professional journalist and a computer scientist “Data can be the source of data journalism, or it can be the tool with which the story is told – or it can be both. Paul Bradshaw, Birmingham City University

WHAT IS DATA JOURNALISM?  Let’s mash the two together:  Data journalism is “Journalism in which data leads to and/or is instrumental in presenting a story in the public interest”  “In the public interest” – important to distinguish that simply obtaining interesting data does not equal ‘data journalism’ – example of story that has huge database of raw data/then presented in context – case in point: Wikileaks

WHAT IS ‘DATA?’ Anything quantifiable and in the public interest! For example: Government Databases • Budget Records • Short-form Census • The number of streetlamps in Toronto •

SO WHAT’S A DATA JOURNALIST? Think of a data journalist as a foreign correspondent that spends time opening spreadsheets rather than overseas Just as there’s no such thing as speaking ‘Chinese’ or ‘First Nations’, data journalism is made up of many different languages and dialects.

Component nents of a a Dat ata a Jour urnal nalis ism S Story Data Management Data Collection Data Visualization Geocoding Scraping/Crawling

SCRAPING/CRAWLING Parsing large volumes of data and extracting relevant information Languages: Python, Ruby on Rails, Regular Expressions Ex. 1: : In Inside the F Federal B Budget Stuart T Thomp mpson, , Mike Sukma manows wsky, D David We Weisz (Ad H Hoc Da Data)

DATA COLLECTION/CLEANUP Obtaining records from municipal, provincial and federally-affiliated departments for dissemination and analysis in the public interest Language: Google Refine, Freedom of Information/Access to Information Requests Ex. 2 . 2: : ATI R I Request - TTC N Noise Co Compl plaints 2011 ( (Da David We Weisz)

DATABASE MANAGEMENT Organizing, correlating and analyzing large groups of records Languages: Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, SPSS, MySQL Ex. 3 3: Par arking T Ticket D Dat atab abas ase Ch Chad S Skelton ( (Vanc ncouv uver Sun un)

DATA VISUALIZATION Presenting data in an attractive way that the general public can understand and interact with. Languages: HTML5, JavaScript, JQuery Ex. 4: : “What d doe oes the m mod odern f family look ook like in n your ur city?” B By Ryan n MacDo Dona nald, Stua uart A. Thompson, on, M Murat Yuks kseli lir (TheGlobeandMail.c .com om)

GEOCODING Drawing conclusions from geographic datum; plotting points on a map, as well as geospatial analysis Programs: Google Fusion Tables, ArcGIS, QGIS Ex. 5 “Censu susF sFile: W Where do y you u fit in?” Adam H Hoope per ( (OpenFile)

WHAT MAKES GREAT DATA JOURNALISM?

WHAT MAKES GREAT DATA JOURNALISM? PEOPL OPLE! Photograph by Steve McCurry

WHAT MAKES GREAT DATA JOURNALISM? Data for data’s sake is not the intent on data journalism What separates data journalism from reports, audits, projections are people – like all great journalism, the human element is fundamental .

CANADA’S DATA JOURNALISTS Adam Hooper – (Freelance) Fred Vallance -Jones – University of King’s College (formerly Hamilton Spectator) Glen MacGregor – Ottawa Citizen David McKie – CBC Patrick Cain, Keith Robinson and Leslie Young – Globalnews.ca Data Bureau Stuart A. Thompson – The Globe & Mail Jim Rankin, Robert Cribb – Toronto Star Steve Rennie– Canadian Press David Akin – Sun News Roberto Rocha – Montreal Gazette Chad Skelton – Vancouver Sun

DATA JOURNALISM IN CANADA We e have the e tal alent ent. S So what at’s s stopping ing us us?

CANADA’S DATA JOURNALISM BARRIERS • Access to Information • Funding & Support

ACCESS TO INFORMATION Inconsistent d dat ata a format at  No unified data format  Files can be in .txt, Excel, Access, (if we’re lucky)  Usually it’s like this (photocopy of a picture), leading to OCR software, and headaches Exorbitant Co Costs  Records start at $5 – and can exceed… $2 billion! Ti Timeline  From one month to 7 years and beyond

ACCESS TO INFORMATION 5,234 – total number of Federal access requests by news media in the year ending March 31, 2011 Increase of 41% over the year before However…

ACCESS TO INFORMATION …In the world’s first RTI Ranking, Canada scored 79 points out of a possible 150. USA – 89 points Mexico – 119 Points Columbia – 82 Points “As a country that was once among the world's leaders in government openness, it is unfortunate that Canada has dropped so far down the list. Partly, this is the result of global progress, with which Canada has failed to keep pace. Canada's Access to Information Act, while cutting edge in 1983, has not been significantly updated since then, and reflects many outdated norms.” - The Ce Cent ntre f for Law and nd De Democracy, Gl Global Right t to Inf nformation R Rating

EXAMPLE: RACE & CRIME SERIES Newsroom: T Toronto Star Journ rnalists: J Jim R Rankin, Scott Simmie, Michelle S Shepard, Joh ohn Dunc Duncanson, J Jennifer Quinn. nn.

EXAMPLE: RACE & CRIME SERIES Follow-up to Race & Crime series • ATI requests took seven years and $10,000 • Includes geocoded maps •

EXAMPLE: RACE & CRIME SERIES Updated version of data from previous two stories, as well as updated Toronto census demographic data

THE RESULT? Over a dozen stories and features • Police across the country acknowledge that racial bias exists • Toronto police partnered with the human rights commission to find ways to • improve hiring, promotion and retention of minority officers, and at ways to improve how they police.

INSIGHTS: JIM RANKIN, TORONTO STAR “Data journalism is nothing new. What is relatively fresh is the ease with which we can now make data visualizations. This is exciting and bosses are starting to get it. For a long time, it was a very lonely landscape in Canada, with very few journalists who included computer-assisted reporting in their toolboxes. That is changing. So, where are we behind in Canada? Data visualizations (but catching up). Use of FOIs by journalists (woefully low). Data hosting on MSM web sites. Fewer hybrid [journalists] who can code (also catching up).”

FUNDING AND SUPPORT …We need it.

Reporters’ Lab Description: A project of Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy, with a focus on reducing the cost of original public affairs journalism, with a focus on data journalism What they do: Review enterprise journalism software • Write and report on matters related to public affairs journalism • Commission original programs (Timeflow, Video Notebook, Haystax) •

KNIGHT-MOZILLA OPENNEWS The ultimate journalist/hack collaboration Dedicated to solving online problems related to news coverage and computer- assisted reporting.

KNIGHT MOZILLA OPENNEWS Ha Hack Days  One-off events around the globe where hacks/hackers collaboratively solve pressing data journalism issues through collaboration and programming Sour urce  Repository of open-source written within the journalism community, including features exploring the authors behind the code itself Fell llowships  Knight Mozilla Fellows embedded in partner newsrooms for 10 months, writing code that aids online reportage  2013 Fellowships

KNIGHT-MOZILLA FELLOWSHIPS New York Times • Why no BBC • Canadian the Guardian • Zeit Online • newsrooms? Spiegel Online • the Boston Globe • ProPublica • La Nacion •

CANADIAN RESOURCES

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT (FOR EVERYONE!) Distill lls la large, co convolu luted i issues into rel relevan ant in informat ation