2. What I will be talking about! - 1
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Let’ s start with a small story……
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ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst
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Data are not speaking; but journalists are gathering data turn
them in to stories.
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Journalism is producing truth seeking stories in the public
interest based on data.
3. What I will be talking about! - 2
•
The digitalization causes an enormous increase of all sorts of
data stored by all kind of organization from governments to
NGO's and companies.
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Data are very fashionable
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Journalist should check policies based on data and dig in data
to find news
4. What I will be talking about! - 3
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How strong is journalism against the powers?
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Journalism can feed the public debate to help control and check
the use of power.
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But: Journalism is in crisis; subscription are dropping, lot of
journalism jobs are lost.
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Data journalism is quality reporting and one of directions to re
invent journalism.
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Here is some data about journalism:
5. Where are we going?
•From print to online
•From text to multimedia
production
•From news to
background, analysis,
investigations and
features
•Looking for a new
business model and for a
new journalist
•http://www.economist.com/node/18904136
6. 4 Year Category Trend by Quarter:
Daily Newspapers
Comment:
Circulation has declined annually by 5.75 % since 2008, equivalent to
461,000 copies.
7. Observations:
•Times remain tough for all in the print industry.
•Current GDP projections indicate that we will achieve a 2.5% GDP growth
albeit that our CPI inflation is just over 6%.
•The Daily Newspaper category continues to decline with several
sharp drops in total circulation. That said, vernacular circulation
growth continues
•Weeklies have posted solid growth.
•The Weekend English and Afrikaans categories continues to slide while
vernacular growth continues.
•Local Newspapers are down overall. However, several titles reflect strong
growth including Tembisan.
•Free Newspapers are stable overall, but it would be remiss not to mention
again the startling growth of the Zululand Eyethu, up 303%.
•SOURCE: GORDON PATTERSON
8. What is data journalism ?
• It looks like data journalism is young, but it already started
in 1968 with Philip Meyer reporting about the Detroit’s
riots using an IBM mainframe
• Is it poverty or relative deprivation?
• Other names:
• Precision journalism; analytical journalism; CARR and
now data journalism
• But all agree: Journalism can be improved by using tools
from science
12. How does data journalism
work?
Journalism
•Story idea
•Finding data sources
•Collecting data: importing
scraping
•Analyzing data
•Produce the story: visualize
Science
•Hypothesis
•Building a measurement tool
•Fieldwork and experiment
•Analyzing data
•Test the hypothesis
•Publish in a journal
13. Finding Data: story idea
Turn the web in a database
WHERE:
National Bureau for
statistics
NGO's
Web: find excel
Web: tables
HOW:
Download
Copy-paste
Scraping: Outwit Hub
14. Mother of all Data Journalism
Analyzing data
Spreadsheets
MS Office: excel
Open Office
R project or PSPP
Cleaning data: Refine
Ordering data: top10
Simple calculations
for key figures
Graphs: bar, pie,
scatter diagrams
16. Data Journalism: team work and
important
IMPORTANT
More data
More use of data for
policies
Check
Find hidden trends
TEAM WORK
Writer
Researcher
Hacker
Designer
Involvement of the
editor
17. Convergence
• Cooperation between hardcopy and online
• Online interactive data
• Hardcopy static picture
• Complementing approaches
19. Example from City Press
Visualize Story Sept 16
Council bigwigs get fat
cheques
http://www.citypress.co.za/Politics/News/Council-bigwigs-get-fat-
cheques-20120915
20. Data “Boot Camp” Helps Kenyan Reporter
Expose School Sanitation Woes
Link
21. Khayelitsha
•Simple and good by a
junior reporter of the
Cape Times
•Here is the link to the
story
• And here is
spreadsheet
22. So you can start simple
but…..
•Sometimes the data are
not there, although they
should
•For example members of
SA parliament
•I wanted to run a copy
of a Dutch story about
representation of the
parliament. Here is
copy
24. Advanced stories are
possible too
•Social network
analysis of Twitter
contacts between 500
SA journalists
•Story
•Zoom
25. To conclude
• There is light at the end of the tunnel…..
• But it could mean that an other train is approaching fast
• For example: sovereign debt ratings by Moody’s
• The press release of the Treasury was saying Rating is Baa1
• But did not pay much attention to the negative outlook!
• That is a nice way to get “good news”
• Battle on!
26. THANK YOU VERY MUCH
•E-mail: peter@d3-media.nl
•Twitter: peter_verweij
•Blog: http://d3-media.blogspot.nl/