Author Archives: Rachel Bartlett

About Rachel Bartlett

Rachel Bartlett is editor of Journalism.co.uk

Wishing all our readers a happy Christmas

Before we close the Journalism.co.uk office for the Christmas holiday period we just want to wish all our readers a happy Christmas.

We’ll be back on Thursday 2 January and look forward to an exciting year of digital journalism innovation ahead. We have lots planned for the coming months, including our journalism social on Tuesday 11 February and our digital journalism conference news:rewired on Thursday 20 February – we hope to see you there.

In the meantime, have a lovely Christmas and very happy new year celebrations.

#ijf13: Data journalism pointers and Excel starter tips

Image by Abron on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Image by Abron on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Data journalism is not a new phenomenon. Speaking at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Steve Doig from the Walter Cronkite school of journalism highlighted this by talking about the impact of the rise of the personal computer in the early 1980s and how this helped journalists track “patterns” in the data they were getting hold of.

Before this technology arrived, such reporting was “often based simply on anecdotes”, he said. Giving the example of covering “the problem of drunk driving”, journalists would have previously had to have referenced a “bad example of such an accident” before moving to discuss the “larger problem”, he explained.

The nice thing about data journalism is it lets you go beyond anecdotes to evidence.

His workshop ran through some of the key features of Excel to help journalists sort, filter, “transform” and “summarise” data.

Below is a summary of some of the key points he raised – the full tutorial is available online.

  • Sorting, filtering, transforming and summarising data with Excel

When it comes to the most common format of data, Doig said it “tends to be alphabetical”, which will not make it immediately clear to a journalist what the story, or stories, behind the data are.

So we want this to be “more journalistically interesting”, Doig said. As an example he demonstrated how journalists can sort numbers by highest or lowest.

When it comes to filtering data, he described some particularly large datasets as “forests”, and that journalists “only want to see the trees that we’re interested in”.

Using Excel journalists can hide data they are less interested in and effectively keep their work area tidy.

Journalists can also use Excel to “transform data using functions and formulas”. For example, he showed the delegates how to create new variables, such as working out a crime rate per 100,000 people when you already have statistics on population and crime. This then helps the journalist “make fair comparisons between places of different size”.

Finally, you can “collapse your data down by categories”. This can be achieved by using pivot tables, which enables the users to select certain variables and bring those together.

For example, if you wanted to look at the number of murders by region, but the data is also broken down into smaller geographic areas, you could build a pivot table, select the ‘region’ variable in ‘row labels’ and select the column stating the number of murders and put it in ‘values’. This would combine the number of murders per region.

  • Data stories are not only for economics or business journalism

Here is just a selection of the different types of data story subjects Doig highlighted:

– Budgets and taxes
– Crime patterns
– School test scores
– Auto accidents
– Demographic change
– Pet licences
– Air quality
– Sports statistics

  • A simple toolbox can get you far when you are starting out

Highlighting some of the key tools for working with datasets, Doig said Excel lets journalists do the majority of the work they would need to, supported by database software like Access, mapping tools like ArcMap, a text editor and social network analysis plug-ins such as NodeXL.

And when it comes to visualising the data he pointed to data journalism staple Google Fusion tables, as well as coding language such as Ruby, Django, perl, python.

  • Tap into industry resources

Doig recommended a number of outlets and online platforms offering industry expertise on data journalism:

Data journalism handbook
– EJC
– NICAR
– Investigative reporters and editors
– SKUP
– Global Investigative Journalism Network

Beet.TV: The New York Times, real-time advertising and Twitter trending data

Image by petesimon on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Image by petesimon on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Beet.TV has an interesting video with Michael Zimbalist, vice president for research & development, and operations at the New York Times, in which he discusses a new advertising tool called Spark which utilises the Times’s data on stories trending on social media.

According to Beet.TV the tool “serves display advertising into stories as they are trending on Twitter, matched with the demographics of the users who ‘touch’ the story on the social network”.

In the video Zimbalist adds that the Times has been “tracking mentions of Times content in Twitter for a really long time”.

As a result the news outlet has “been able to look at different types of content and different people who spread the content and begin to model out which content will start trending”.

See a video of the discussion below:

[link removed as blip.tv is now deceased]

ICO consulting on possible data protection code of practice for the press

ICO consultation doc data protection

Last week the Information Commissioner’s Office launched a “short public consultation” on proposals for a code of practice for the press in the Data Protection Act.

According to the ICO website this follows a recommendation from Lord Justice Leveson for the ICO to “prepare and issue comprehensive good practice guidelines and advice on appropriate principles and standards to be observed by the press in the processing of personal data”.

The consultation was sent out last week, and closes on Friday 15 March. The ICO website states:

This short public consultation on the likely scope and content of the proposed ICO code of practice is an important first step in ensuring our stakeholders have an opportunity to let us know their views and engage in constructive dialogue to develop a common understanding of how data protection legislation applies to the media. This will be followed by a full public consultation on the code itself.

In the consultation document the ICO adds:

The code will not contain any new legal duties – the purpose of such codes is to promote good practice and observance of the requirements of the Data Protection Act by data controllers. Depending upon decisions by the government about possible reform of the law, this guidance may require further review. However, we accept that it is important to produce guidance now, as recommended by Lord Justice Leveson.

Hatip: International Forum for Responsible Media blog.

Amnesty International’s Media Awards open to entries, with digital innovation category

Bureau of Investigative Journalism custody

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism won the digital innovation category in 2012

Amnesty International UK has announced that entries can now be submitted to its annual Media Awards, which the organisation said in a release “recognise excellence in journalism that has made a significant contribution to the UK public’s greater awareness and understanding of human rights issues”.

One of the awards categories is for digital innovation. Last year’s winner was the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for “deaths in custody: a case to answer“.

In a release, Amnesty International UK added that “to encourage a wide range of entries, we have established a sponsorship fund to support a limited number of entries from freelance journalists and filmmakers, as well as small digital and broadcast outlets”.

Entries can be submitted until Friday 1 March. More details are available on the awards site.

How to respond to consultation on website operators clause of draft defamation bill

Houses_of_Parliament_Flickr1.jpg_resized_460_

Image by alancleaver_2000 on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

An informal consultation on the section of the draft defamation bill that covers “operators of websites” has been launched to gather feedback.

According to The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog, the consultation relates to clause 5 of the bill which intends to “provide a new defence for website operators in circumstances where the claimant can pursue his claim for defamation against the person who posted the statement”.

The consultation, being run by the Ministry of Justice, will close on Thursday 31 January (the deadline has been extended).

Those who wish to respond can do so by emailing defamation@justice.gsi.gov.uk for more information.

Ofcom report: TV main source ‘of most types of news’ except celebrity news and gossip

By Brylle on Arte & Fotographia. Some rights reserved.

Consumer research by Ofcom released in a study on Thursday reports that TV is the main source of news across all the countries analysed in the research, except for celebrity news and gossip for which the internet came top.

The research was based on an online survey of at least 1000 respondents from each country included (UK, France, Germany, Italy, USA, Japan, Australia and Spain) who were asked about “which platform they used as their main source for different types of news: national, international, sports, and celebrity news”. Answers included TV, online, radio, newspapers, magazines and “from other people”.

The study reports that “online consumers in the UK are less likely to use the internet as a main source of national news than those in Italy and Spain”, and across all countries included in the report television “is the main source of most types of news”, apart from celebrity news and gossip which was more likely to be sourced from the internet.

Although the most-cited main sources of news for online users generally are TV and the internet, across the countries in the sample there are subtle differences in consumption patterns.

When asked about their main source for national news, the platform named most often was TV, followed by the internet. In the UK, almost half (48 per cent) selected TV as their main source of national news. Respondents in France were more likely to state that they used TV as their main source of national news, where almost six in ten (58 per cent) selected TV as their main source and 26 per cent selected the internet.

A similar picture emerges in Australia, where 53 per cent mainly access national news on TV and 31 per cent via the internet. This contrasts with Italy where the internet is more likely to be used as a main source of national news, with 48 per cent of respondents using this platform, compared to 40 per cent naming TV.

Pricing of the i newspaper: Editor on why 20p, and not free

The editor of the i newspaper, Stefano Hatfield, was asked at the Society of Editors conference today why the newspaper was priced at 20p and not given away free.

The i first launched in October 2010. Now, more than two years on, Hatfield said the pricing point “works both to establish a quality proposition and it’s also helpful in supermarkets establishing a value proposition”.

If you’d have gone free, in consumers mind [it would have] immediately been up against Metro and we didn’t want to be up against Metro, we wanted to be up against the Guardian, Times, Telegraph.

He added that when the newspaper is sold in supermarkets, therefore, the 20p pricing “is an advantage”.

He added that the “key thing is it’s an active choice to purchase the paper … rather than having it just given to you.”

The latest results from the Audit Bureau of Circulation, which published national newspaper circulation reports for October on Friday (9 November), showed a 44 per cent increase year-on-year in average daily circulation for the i, which reached 304,691 in October this year.

This also represented a 7.7 per cent increase month-on-month.

BBC reports ‘new record’ for mobile during US election coverage

The BBC has reported a “record” number of mobile devices being used to access its web content in a day with “nearly 5 million” devices visiting BBC News Online on Wednesday (7 November), as results of the US election continued to be announced.

The broadcaster began measuring access via mobile devices at the beginning of the year. The record of almost 5 million beats a previous record from the week before of 4 million, recorded during Hurricane Sandy.

In a blog post BBC News website editor Steve Herrmann said the broadcaster’s election coverage also “brought the highest traffic to BBC News Online so far this year”.

On Wednesday (7 November) the news website recorded 16.4 million unique browsers.

Herrmann said this “makes it the highest traffic day of 2012 so far and rivals our two biggest previous days during the August riots and the March Tsunami, in 2011. During the England riots, on 9 August 2011 there were there were 18.2 million unique browsers”.

This comes just weeks after BBC News started to roll out as default its new responsive site on mobile phones to improve the experience for its growing mobile audience.