
The New York Times course to teach its reporters data skills is now open-source - espeed
https://open.nytimes.com/how-we-helped-our-reporters-learn-to-love-spreadsheets-adc43a93b919
======
rahimnathwani
I found it both amusing and annoying that the first line of the article
mentions VLOOKUP.

In my experience, there's never a good reason to use VLOOKUP. You can always
achieve the same functionality using INDEX (in conjunction with MATCH). Using
VLOOKUP means that your formulae break as soon as someone inserts a new column
in the middle of your table. And clicking the cell with the formula doesn't
immediately show you which two columns are used by the function.

More (opinionated) Excel tips here: [https://www.encona.com/posts/excel-best-
practices](https://www.encona.com/posts/excel-best-practices)

~~~
samdfonseca
So you just decided you were gonna find something to criticize before you even
clicked the link, eh?

~~~
rahimnathwani
Yup. Without clicking the link I correctly guessed that the first sentence
mentioned VLOOKUP

/s

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minimaxir
I know Hacker News dislikes spreadsheets as opposed to statistical programming
languages like R and Python, and there have been _many_ startups trying to
disrupt that paradigm, but time and time again they have been the most
reliable tools for data analysis _and collaborating with nontechnical users_.

Even as a data scientist working with other data scientists, my most common
deliverable is a Google Sheet.

~~~
mehrdadn
For the Excel pros here: how do you ever template anything in Excel? Like if
you want the same formula for two different tables, do you just copy-paste?
How do you keep them in sync? There's just so many things I want to do in
Excel and it seems so limited in what it can do that I can't fathom how non-
programmers end up using it so successfully.

~~~
grosswait
I've seen locked sheets used as data source for constants and formulas with
variables, the cells reference those with lookups and variables.

I've come across a few spreadsheets that made me want to meet and learn
something from the authors. Some have been very elaborate and surprisingly
resilient.

~~~
mehrdadn
You can look up formulas? Never realized that, that's really cool. Thanks!

------
westurner
It's more work to verify all formulas that reference unnamed variables in a
spreadsheet than to review the code inputs and outputs in a notebook.

"Teaching Pandas and Jupyter to Northwestern journalism students" [in DC]
[https://www.californiacivicdata.org/2017/06/07/dc-python-
not...](https://www.californiacivicdata.org/2017/06/07/dc-python-notebook/)

> [http://www.firstpythonnotebook.org/](http://www.firstpythonnotebook.org/)

You can also develop d3.js visualizations — just like NYT — with jupyter
notebooks and whichever language(s).

"Data-Driven Journalism" ("ddj") [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-
driven_journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-driven_journalism)

[http://datadrivenjournalism.net/](http://datadrivenjournalism.net/)

"The Data Journalism Handbook 1"
[https://datajournalism.com/read/handbook/one](https://datajournalism.com/read/handbook/one)

"The Data Journalism Handbook 2"
[https://datajournalism.com/read/handbook/two](https://datajournalism.com/read/handbook/two)

While there are a number of ScholarlyArticle journals that can publish
notebooks, I'm not aware of any newspapers that are prepared to publish
notebooks as NewsArticles. It's pretty easy to `jupyter convert --to html` and
`--to markdown` or just 'Save as'

Regarding expressing facts as _verifiable claims_ with structured data in HTML
and/or blockchains: "Fact Checks"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15529140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15529140)

Does this course recommend linking to every source dataset and/or including
full citations (with DOI) in the article? Does this course recommend getting a
free DOI for the published revision of an e.g. GitHub project repository
(containing data, and notebooks and/or the article text) with Zenodo?

------
rambojazz
Can somebody please explain what "open source" means here? I could only find a
bunch of files on a google drive, none of which have a licensing note?

~~~
cyborgx7
"Open source" is what this sub-blogspam level article chose to call it. The
NYT called it "Releasing our materials".

[https://open.nytimes.com/how-we-helped-our-reporters-
learn-t...](https://open.nytimes.com/how-we-helped-our-reporters-learn-to-
love-spreadsheets-adc43a93b919)

------
Naac
Are they using the term open source correctly here? It's already muddled
between open source, open core, and Free software ( RMS approved ).

Couldn't they just day the course materials are now available?

~~~
rrishi
I feel that courses co-opting the term "open source" is just unnecessary.
Seems like a PR gimmick.

~~~
cyborgx7
The NYT never calls it "open source". That is an invention of this article.

------
stakhanov
Attempts to get journalists more up-to-speed with this sort of stuff are to be
applauded.

But the real problem is journalists (and their audiences) who, for a lack of
professional ethics, don't give a crap about which parts of their stories
can/cannot be backed up quantitatively. Besides selling newspapers, not giving
a crap also has the great benefit that now they don't have to learn math, or
programming, or logical thinking, or any of that.

------
subpixel
To be clear, these are supporting course materials (syllabus, data sets, cheat
sheets, etc.), not actual instruction materials. I'd love to take the course.

------
3xblah
"... keeping track of the 3,472,382 people currently running for the
Democratic nomination for president."

Is that a joke?

[https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_registered_2020_presidential...](https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_registered_2020_presidential_candidates)

~~~
untog
...yes?

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maccard
Any reason this links to a non-original source, with one of those annoying
full screen email grab modals, when the article contains a link to the
original release [0] ?

[0] [https://open.nytimes.com/how-we-helped-our-reporters-
learn-t...](https://open.nytimes.com/how-we-helped-our-reporters-learn-to-
love-spreadsheets-adc43a93b919)

~~~
sctb
OK! We've updated the link from [https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/06/the-new-
york-times-has-a-c...](https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/06/the-new-york-times-
has-a-course-to-teach-its-reporters-data-skills-and-now-theyve-open-sourced-
it/).

~~~
ionescu77
Thanks for keeping the link and posting here!

------
bcks
Off topic maybe: are there resources out there for teaching coders how to
journalism?

~~~
dlivingston
Outside of personal blogging, in what context would a programmer need to know
the fundamentals of journalism?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
When running a startup, and you either _want_ the press to talk to you, or the
press decides that you're an interesting story.

Larger companies have PR people to handle that kind of thing. In a startup,
though, it could easily be a programmer who talks to the press, because there
isn't anyone else.

~~~
mr_toad
There are courses on how to speak to the media. They are aimed at CEOs,
politicians etc, or anyone who might need to speak to the media. Often taught
by reporters, or ex-reporters.

I’ve done one, I’d recommend it. I have rarely talked to journalists, but the
skills are useful in any situation where you’re being ‘grilled’, like a job
interview.

~~~
mehrdadn
That's cool. Where are these kinds of courses generally taught?

~~~
mr_toad
I’d google for something like “media training for executives”. You can
probably get courses in most major cities.

~~~
mehrdadn
I see, thanks!

