1. www.public.asu.edu/~sdoig/IJF2014/

2. DATA JOURNALISM: FROM IDEA TO STORY Steve Doig Cronkite School of Journalism, Arizona State University steve.doig@asu.edu @sdoig

3. Why do data journalism?

4. What is “data”?

5. Finding data story ideas

6. datadrivenjournalism.net/

7. IRE’s ExtraExtra feed

8. theguardian.com/news/datablog

9. Informants and whistleblowers

10. Read documents

11. Work backwards from your idea! 1. What statements do you want to make? 2. What variables are needed to make those statements? 3. Who would collect data with those variables? 4. How will you get the data from the collector?

12. 1. Statements? Lede = hypothesis Bullet points = statements Examples for a crime and courts data story: “Crime has increased/decreased X % since...” “The X per 100.000 violent crime rate of Y City is the worst...” “Only X % of reported crimes result in arrests...”

13. 2. Variables needed? Columns = variables Rows = records Two main kinds of variables Categorical: Sex, city, postal code, type of crime, etc... Numeric: Age, cost, population, weight, arrests, accident, etc...

14. 3. Who collects those variables?

15. 4. Get the data!

16. Public records tools

17. Data formats?

18. Avoid PDFs

19. Avoid PDFs...but if necessary... Convert to *.xls with: Acrobat Pro Zamzar CometDocs (many others)

20. ...NOW WHAT?? YOU HAVE DATA...

21. Clean the data

22. Data cleaning tools

23. Look for patterns

24. Excel tools Sort Filter Functions Pivot tables

25. Brain tools – math and statistics

28. Friday 1130-1300 (Hotel Sangallo)

29. EJC MOOC – free!!

30. Data journalism story elements

32. Data journalism team You! Other reporters Editors Graphic artists Photographers Videographers Page designers Web designers App developers

33. Other DDJ workshops

34. Questions??