Data-driven journalism: What is there to learn? (Stanford, June 2010) #ddj

DATA-DRIVEN JOURNALISM What is there to learn? Mirko Lorenz, Information Architect • Innovation Projects IJ-7 - Innovation-Journalism Conference, Stanford - 7-9 June 2010 Deutsche Welle, Direktion Distribution - Innovation Projects

Data-driven journalism Whe re is th e da ta? Wor kfl ows ? Will journalists need to learn how to code? h this? How can a journa list make money wit Doe s the audi e n ce reall y ca re fo r dat a?

News offerings are packages Easy to use (30 minutes for overview) Central place for Opportunity to connect debate Delivered to front door Classifieds for jobs, houses, cars,.... Best way to reach (local, specific) audiences through advertising Fallen to pieces, what‘s next?

DATA-DRIVEN JOURNALISM Main points of this talk: - Basics: What is data-driven journalism? - Process: What is there to learn for journalists/media? - Motivation: How can journalists use data to create value?

Connecting journalism and data

Perspective on data „The sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I’m joking, but who would’ve guessed that computer engineers would’ve been the sexy job of the 1990s? The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it—that’s going to be a hugely important skill.“ - Hal Varian, Google Chief Economist, McKinsey Quarterly, Jan. 2009

Shouldn‘t journalists be part of this? Heretic view: When was the last time media really solved a problem for anyone?

What is data-driven journalism? Data-driven journalism is a workflow 1. Digging deep into (big) data (scrape, cleanse, structure) 2. Mining for „nuggets“ of information (filter) 3. Visualizing information in graphics or multimedia specials 4. Connecting classic storytelling with otherwise dry statistics 5. Creating media that has value for readers/users A measure for value could be that users of such offerings are willing to pay $5, $10 because the value of the information presented is so obvious. Deutsche Welle, Direktion Distribution │ Seite 2

Who can benefit from data-driven journalism? Readers/Users: Looking for in-depth answers, not „more of the same“ Journalists: Do a new form of „reporting“, understand the patterns that surround us Publishers/Media: Entering a field where converged formats create relevant value Visual Designers: Needed for innovative presentation of "information nuggets" Data-specialists/programmers: Apply their knowledge of data-mining, data integration and analysis

Why we need new forms of reporting

USERS ARE INCREASINGLY BORED http://www.ap.org/newmodel.pdf

THEY SEARCH FOR INSIGHTS, BUT IT‘S FRUSTRATINGLY DIFFICULT http://www.ap.org/newmodel.pdf Participants in this study did show signs shallow and erratic news consumption. People wanted more depth and were trying to find it. Unfortunately their attempts to substantiate and validate stories were not actually getting them anything new.

EVERYDAY LARGE AMOUNTS OF INFORMATION VANISH BECAUSE THEY ARE PUBLISHED IN PRINT OR TV

Why we need data-driven journalism... Online work to be 'data-driven' Posted: 16/10/02 By: Caroline White "Journalists will do less 'been-there, done-that' reporting as readers demand more continuous coverage of issues“ "Consumer news is a hard sell in a lot of newsrooms because it's not going to win a Pulitzer, but people really want objective information about what they are buying or have bought." - Hal Straus, database editor and manager for Washington Post: http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/5493.php

Why we need data-driven journalism... „....we will have to increasingly rely on "data" to feed our stories, to the point that "data-driven reporting" becomes second nature to journalists.“ Zach Beauvais, Journalism Needs Data in the 21st Century, ReadWriteWeb, August 5, 2009 http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/journalism_needs_data_in_21st_century.php

Does media understand the inherent structure of its own information? This article is a must-read in order to understand how thinking in newsrooms should change. Adrian Holovaty: A fundamental way newspaper sites need to, 2006 http://www.holovaty.com/writing/fundamental-change/

WE NEED BETTER FILTERS... http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

...TO UNDERSTAND http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

TRACK DEVELOPMENT OVER TIME

http://www.informationisbeautiful.com

New York Times Rent or buy calculator

How can data- driven journalism create value?

Creating value with data-driven journalism - Help making the really important descisions - Business - Markets, Finance, Training, Innovation - Politics - Budgets, Programms, Initiatives - Consumers - Buying a house/car/insurance, Orientation, Future - More specific - Total cost calculations with no selling interest behind - Reducing time to find the answer - Radically reformatting information to make it easier to use - Unearthing the truth in past or even future events

Example: Guardian doing crowd-sourcing in expense scandal Toni Hirst http://blog.ouseful.info/

Not as new as it sounds: Big and small examples - Thomson Reuters (Thomson moving from news to data) - Economy.com (Moody‘s) - Economist Intelligence Unit - GapMinder, Karolinska Institute/Google - Big Fat Story, Daily Beast - Information is beautiful - Flowing Data - Statista - EveryBlock (acquired by MSNBC)

What is there to learn?

Data-driven journalism: An evolving workflow model We need to look at the whole chain to create value Main Digg Transform Visualize Present Storytelling Distribute Activity Specific Tracking Scraping Charts Multimedia Making it Transform Tasks data sources Cleaning Calculators specials as a memorable information Structuring key format into usable Open Data formats/ Data sets cheat sheets Your own data Predictions Examples data.gov Open Data Information is New York Mediastorm eMarketer datagov.co.uk Data sets beautiful Times Worldbank API Duck Rabbit Statista Flowing Data Innovative e.g. Guardian Interactivity Bombay Flying Eurostat (?) Thomson Data-Blog Elastic Lists Club Good Toni Hirst Tableau Magazine Adam http:// ManyEyes Westbrook blog.ouseful.info/ plus many others....

Deutsche Welle and „data-driven journalism“ Practice what you preach... TSD Training- and Service Center Data-driven journalism (Germany) Main idea: Connecting media companies with data-specialists Group: Data-Specialists, Publisher, international media/training Goal: To achieve a much higher level of data-integration through specialists Demonstrate what data-driven journalism can be, train journalists Developing and building examples of data-driven journalism Making sure that complexities of data integration are no barrier

Adding a European perspective: Articles on data-driven journalism Profiles of data-driven journalists Events & Training Curriculum for data-driven journalism http://www.ejc.net/ http://futureofjournalism.net/

Data-driven journalism: Short list of links, sites and books - Adrian Holovaty: A fundamental way newspaper sites need to change (2006) http://www.holovaty.com/writing/fundamental-change/ - Hal Varian on how the Web challenges managers, McKinsey Quarterly, 2009 http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Hal_Varian_on_how_the_Web_challenges_managers_2286 - Zach Beauvais, Journalism Needs Data in 21st Century, ReadWriteWeb, 2009 http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/journalism_needs_data_in_21st_century.php - Stijn Debrouwere, We’re in the information business (April 2010) http://stdout.be/2010/we-are-in-the-information-business/ - David McCandless: Information is Beautiful (Blog) http://www.holovaty.com/writing/fundamental-change/ - Nathan Yau: Flowing Data (Blog) http://flowingdata.com/ - Ian Ayres: Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way To Be Smart, 2007 - Data.gov (US) http://www.data.gov - Worldbank http://data.worldbank.org/

Question to the audience What is the one reason keeping you from exploring data? ?

Thank You! Merci! Danke! Contact: Mirko Lorenz Mirko.Lorenz@dw-world.de │ Name des Bereichs, Name der Abteilung │ Seite 14

http://www.datablog.cz	196
http://datajournalism.ru	99
http://www.mediakritiek.be	22
https://twimg0-a.akamaihd.net	6
https://twitter.com	2
http://ivan.yblog.org	1
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Data-driven journalism: What is there to learn? (Stanford, June 2010) #ddj

by Mirko Lorenz on Jun 29, 2010

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Data-driven journalism: What is there to learn? (Stanford, June 2010) #ddj Presentation Transcript