The Data Journalism Handbook | Hacker News Reader

The Data Journalism Handbook

datajournalismhandbook.org

90 pointskreutz19 comments

Where can people with Data Journalist skills be found? We're trying to hire what we're calling a Data Editor (similar I believe) where the role is about using our data to tell compelling data-driven stories. It requires the ability to analyze and ask questions of our data (in MS Excel at a minimum) to ultimately develop short data-driven narratives of their findings.

While we've found folks who are amazing at the data analysis part or the writing part, never have the two met. Either we're looking for a unicorn or simply not looking in the right places? Any recs on where to look?

I do what you're describing, as a community it's a real mix of backgrounds. Personally I think you're best off looking for someone with an editorial background and a willingness or interest in the technical side than the other way around, a knack for spotting a story is a harder skill to learn. The other thing is that presenting those stories in anything other than words is another skillset entirely, both in terms of design and development. Finding someone that can do all 3 very well is a tall order. More recent grads coming out of journo school increasingly have some programming or stats proficiency, that would be the best place to start looking. The other place would be the more hard (as in both high quality and more technically/theory focussed) graphic/information design courses.

Dunno, the trouble with a lot of data journalism that currently exists, is that the people doing it don't have a strong statistical background and tend to forget things like using null hypotheses and regression analysis and take the things they find in data at face value much too often. So sure, teach a writer to do data analysis, but when you do, really teach them.

I couldn't agree more. Serious data journalism is essentially a subset of investigative journalism and it really takes a team - qualified statisticians, domain experts, journalists and visual designers.

IRE's NICAR listserv and conference are the best place.

You should checkout Laura + Chris Amicos project, Homicide Watch DC.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1368665357/a-one-year-st...

http://homicidewatch.org/

Seems like data journalism + homicide + startups all wrapped in one.

Grow'm. Hire / promote a tech savvy journalist / writer. The programming / data analysis part can be learned. Much harder to learn "compelling" writing.

True, although while the more practical mechanics of programming for data analysis can be learned easily, I wouldn't underestimate the time taken to really learn how to be scientific in thinking about and analysing data.

I feel like the skill-set involved in digging for stories in data can sometimes be at odds with a scientific approach---which requires a lot of rigour and self-honesty before claiming some observed trend is significant, and in avoiding the temptation to over-interpret or over-extrapolate.

Of course this may or may not be a problem, depending on what you're trying to do (entertain? persuade? understand? model? predict?)

Many folks in web analytics consulting have similar skills. All about finding a story in the thicket of data, and then constructing a narrative to communicate to your client.

Check out Hacks/Hackers, a group cofounded by an editor at the New York Times and one of the cofounders of Storify. There's branches all over the world

The role is about using our data to tell compelling data-driven stories

People that can are not at all uncommon -- but most often they found in high executive levels or finacial services, where their work is not public. Most of the work that is published for the public is not of the same caliber as what is consumed internally. The issue you may be describing is just about supply/demand at a certain price point and rank within an organization, etc.

Check out my sample links. Data is from the World Bank.

www.bricbracs.com/worldbank/foodfactor/

www.bricbracs.com/worldbank/footprints/

Hi,

datadrivenjournalism.net has a jobs section: http://jobs.datadrivenjournalism.net/

Otherwise, the data-driven-journalism mailing list from okfn has quite a large audience: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalis...

Hope this helps,

Seriously, "wobbing" is now becoming an internationally used term?

The word is derived from the acronym WOB, which stands for "Wet Openbaarheid Bestuur", a relatively recent Dutch law that obliges government institutes to make government documents available upon request. This law is systematically being sabotaged by all layers of government, to the point of intimidating people who dare to make such a request.

Couple of Dutch co-authors of that book, so it's much more likely that it sort of slipped past the editors :-) In the US people are more likely to talk about FOI or FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests.

I think this is a great idea, but the web version of the document is surprisingly difficult to navigate and read. In fact, it's downright unpleasant. I understand why it is available as a hardcopy version through a publisher, but I wonder why the PDF isn't available for web use.

Possibly because the PDF might be an alternative to any e-reader version they choose to sell.

Hi. We're working on making the source code that was used to generate the web version and the ebook available on Github soon. With that anyone can easily generate a copy of the book in any format of their choice.

Liliana

Great stuff! Thank you very much for your reply, and I look forward to it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com