Category Archives: Data Journalism

Honest John: The MoT Files: The Story Behind The Data

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Good case study on FoI, open data and the how cleaning data is always the first, and often most valuable, step in the data journalism process: "Following the launch of the OpenData website ... we downloaded the MoT data when it became available and set about getting it into a format that could be easily accessed. With more than 355m records, 200m MoTs (all those since the system was computerised in 2006) and 40gb of data, this wasn't an easy task. Like the BBC, we have also had a few problems dealing with the MoT data that's provided by the Government. Firstly, it's huge and difficult to work with. Secondly, as it's sourced from thousands of technicians - and humans make mistakes - it was littered with errors. There were plenty of cars registered in the 1800s and a few steam-powered Renault Clios to boot. We've done our best to ensure it's as clean as possible, but with such a huge data set, there may still be the odd error."

O’Reilly Radar: Why StreetEasy rolled its own maps

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"StreetEasy co-founder Sebastian Delmont (@sd) says that when Google told them last autumn that it intended to enforce pricing on its Maps API, the StreetEasy team looked about for more affordable options. Their experience was similar to others who have turned from proprietary systems to open data: It's work to get started, but ultimately you have more freedom to create and innovate."

Research notes: A completely arbitrary list of takeaways from two unconferences

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Matt Waite on the trouble with finding budding journalist-developers: "I think the problem with finding these students starts with reward structures. Students are told from even before they walk on campus that being a journalist means Being a Good Writer, Being a Good Editor, Being a Good Photographer. No one is telling them they could be an application developer, or a data journalist, or a media entrepreneur. Or if they have heard it, that voice is getting drowned out by traditionalists. A disturbing amount of time, the traditionalists drowning those students out are other students. Until we can attach a reward to this — until it cracks the consciousness of students that there are jobs in this path — I think we’ll continue to struggle."

Sydney Morning Herald: New form of journalism must adhere to old rules

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Pollster Mark Textor: "Too often, data journalists suddenly pretend to be experts. But a journalist is a not a mathematician or statistician. With data journalism that is exactly what they pretend to be. They imagine they are something way beyond the pay grade of the average journalist with a graduate degree. Also there is a subtle but significant change in roles that is a dangerous precedent. Rather than independently comparing different data sets, they become advocates for their own information."

Europa Press Releases: Digital Agenda: Turning government data into gold

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"The [European Commission's Open Data Strategy for Europe is] to lift performance EU-wide is three-fold: firstly the Commission will lead by example, opening its vaults of information to the public for free through a new data portal. Secondly, a level playing field for open data across the EU will be established. Finally, these new measures are backed by the €100 million which will be granted in 2011-2013 to fund research into improved data-handling technologies."

Financial Times: Statistics chief’s warning over misuse of figures

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"Ministers, officials and journalists need to be on their guard when misusing statistics after [Andrew Dilnot,] the new chairman of the UK Statistics Authority warned he would name and shame offenders. ... Speaking to MPs on Tuesday, he cited a calculation error on a front-page news story which suggested public service pensions cost every family in Britain £4,000 a year, when the real number was £360. When asked by the FT why he had not been willing to identify the miscreant – the Daily Telegraph – in his evidence session in parliament, Mr Dilnot insisted this was the last time he would be so reticent."

dataist: Interactive: The 100 richest people in Finland

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Jens Finnäs: "Every year in the beginning of [November] the [Finnish] tax records from last year are published. In other words: you get to know who made the most money. Every year the Finnish media outlets do a very conventional presentation of this material. Page after page of lists of top-earners. Rarely does anyone do anything more creative with the data. ... This is my first visualization in Raphael.js. Previously I have been working with D3 and Protovis, but the weak browser support of these two libraries is becoming a growing concern."