Data Journalism 101 (Part II)

Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at ASU

Michael J. Berens – The Seattle Times

Meet my editor – a guy who thought a special project was something that took two hours instead

of one

Database types •  Obtained from a public agency or other

institutional source (Part I)]

•  Scrapped from the web or digital document – copy and paste (Part I)

•  Created from scratch using any mixture of paper records

•  Hybrid data analysis – layering existing data with your own database

Poll Question: Have you ever created a database from scratch?

Every database begins with a single cell

Cells, fields and headers, oh my

Segregation is good

Address number from street name

Middle initial from first name

First name from last name

Basic fields

Bad Sorry, dude

Good Not bad, grasshopper

Better

Brilliant. You rock!

Hiding in plain sight •  A health care professional was administratively

charged with sexual misconduct with patients.

•  His punishment?

•  He was only allowed to treat women age 50 or older (re: public record posted on Wa. Dept. of Health website)

Basic Fields •  License #

•  Name

•  Occupation

•  Offense type

•  Dates of action

•  Sexual misconduct; unprofessional conduct; moral turpitude

Paper to Excel

Paper to Excel

Poll Question: What is your suggestion

for a unique field?

Tapping the power of Excel

•  Sorting

•  Filtering

•  Basic calculations

Pick the column

Alphabetized by name

Filtering

Chevron marks

Filtered by profession

Calculations •  Always begins with an equal

sign •  Basic math structure using

names of cells •  =A1+A2

Data training resources

Investigative Reporters and Editors: www.ire.org

http://www.ire.org/nicar/

Reynolds Center http://businessjournalism.org

http://businessjournalism.org/registration/llc/

Keep the trash – everything has value

Look for signature cases

The strategy •  Get the basic data

•  Get the basic files

•  Create a spreadsheet – add on categories

•  Dive deeper for paper records – understand the system

Elephants and zoos

Adult family homes

The federal government has launched a grant program that pays states to relocate seniors.

They call it “rebalancing.”

Poll Question: What would you do with

this information?

Develop your nose for data