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Organize your newsroom

Around Data

Jeff Ernsthausen, Data Specialist

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

@jeffernsthausen

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Organize your newsroom around data

  • organize your data
  • organize your colleagues

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How it shouldn’t work: data as research assistance

data

investigative

sports

business

education

politics

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How it can feel: the symptoms

  • being called in for help when the requests stall out
  • being asked to clean up a spreadsheet someone else has been fiddling around in
  • being asked to make sense of or make graphics of data at the end of the reporting process

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How it can work better

data

investigative

sports

business

education

politics

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If you build it...

  • centralized repository of good data
    • standardized codes
    • documentation
    • audit trail

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They still won’t come

… but it’ll be a lot easier to entice them

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If you build it: central repository

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If you build it: documentation

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If you build it: audit trail

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Getting them to come: organizing your data community

  • Identify someone from each work group who has some affinity for spreadsheets and a desire to learn
    • get them comfortable with the basics
      • overview/review courses on data structure AND TERMS!
      • course on spreadsheets
      • course on SQL: with a handout/manual!
    • work with them to identify good datasets to pursue
      • useful for a really great story
      • useful for many stories
      • we check it every day and it’s not well organized
    • get them access to the data
      • baseline: a way to access the spreadsheets
      • better: a way to access them via SQL

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Ok, but really: getting them to come

  • Pursue them
    • suggest story ideas for them in data sets that you could acquire
    • walk them through the process
  • Show them
    • Tableau + MySQL = graphics = excitement
  • Don’t do it for them
    • help them build the query
    • provide them with documentation
    • help them sort the spreadsheet
    • … but make them do it (unless it’s a crazy deadline)
  • Scare the hell out of them
    • MAKE SURE THEY KNOW THAT THERE ARE PITFALLS SO THEY DON’T GO HUNTING ALONE!
  • Backstop them
    • Be there to check their work

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Show them

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And one last thing...

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Keep pursuing them!