
The Journalist-Engineer - sebg
https://medium.com/@matthew_daniels/the-journalist-engineer-c9c1a72b993f#.3rj6iwvgw
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barkingcat
What I find a bit jarring is the lack of journalistic intent in the
verification of data. I know that all data visualisations start at the source
- the data.

The data comes from somewhere, and I'd really like to see data-engineer-
journalists be a bit more skeptical about where that data comes from and how
it was collected / sampled / modified before going into visualisations.

I think that's the one part of the journalist's toolkit that hasn't made its
way into the coding side yet - the ability to step back and say do we trust
this data? How do we verify? Can we talk to the people who collected this? If
it's collected by a government agency, under who's funding was this done? How
do we fact check a graph that composes of an aggregate of population
statistics, for example?

In old school narrative journalism, someone (usually an intern) calls up all
the sources, looks into the government departments who gives the stats, tries
to find third parties from universities or other non-related parties to cross
reference ideas, statements, facts. How do we do that in a data driven world?

It's a good angle and someone ought look into it. Potential for more data-
driven stories.

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danielsf
Author of the Medium post here...

This point comes up a lot...there's a tension in making the data say something
interesting that will get traffic/spread, which might undermine the rigor that
goes into real data-analysis/data science/academic work.

IMO, as long as we disclose the source and preface the biases/problems, I'm ok
with data that isn't perfect (after all, there's no such thing as a perfect
data set).

The lyrical analysis that I did for rappers would _never_ work in
academia...the data set wasn't strong enough. But, it was good enough for the
Internet as a side-project, and I think that most readers understood the
integrity issues with the data (which I also highlighted in the narrative).

But yea, really good points about journalistic standards for coders who write
journalism-esque content.

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Zikes
It's pretty incredible the impact Mike Bostock has had on journalism. Just
five years ago print media was dying and traditional publications were in a
panic, but once they embraced the web they've created articles more engaging
and interactive than ever before.

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danielsf
Author of the article here – totally agree. D3 has totally changed the game.

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anc84
This is basically an ad for the author's service. It also has several
grandiose statements that do not stand the test of scrutiny.

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artifaxx
It was well mixed in with references and analysis of some pretty amazing
visualizations though. I agree it could have been more grounded, but I still
found it a pretty great article. Which statements do you view as too
grandiose?

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danielsf
author here...I don't have any services. what's so ad-driven about it? It was
meant to be a statement about why I'm so passionate about the space right now
:)

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artifaxx
Cool! Out of curiosity, have you come up with ways to monetize this long term?
I ask this because I hope there is a way to support and still see this type of
content for years to come.

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danielsf
No monetization plan. I'm burning through savings :)

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artifaxx
I admire that kind of passion for doing something. Not sure burning through
savings belongs next to a smiley though :p

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theg2
As a developer in a newsroom who had no intention of ending up here, it is
amazing to see the transition in my industry and just how many companies are
eager to hire developers who understand journalism or at least are willing to
partner with reporters and editors.

I can't say it's what I expected to be doing but news organizations are in a
period of massive change and it's an interesting space to be in.

~~~
artifaxx
Have you worked on visualizations such as those in the article, or do you have
a different position? I am very interested in this industry, but I haven't met
anyone with experience there yet.

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widgetic
We did, but on a much smaller scale:
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/erotic-fan-fiction-
value...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/erotic-fan-fiction-
value_561294efe4b0768127029355)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syrian-refugees-
technolo...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syrian-refugees-
technology_560c13e2e4b07681270024d9)

Useful to tell better stories and retain readers, these widgets are also a
great engagement boost. :-)

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artifaxx
Yeah, I can definitely see how these widgets and visualizations make an
article significantly more engaging. I am hoping to learn more so I can have
some visualizations to present of data for my startup. Since we are improving
people's productivity, it would provide significant value to better engage
users in their data.

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danielsf
author here, if anyone has q's

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BillSaysThis
Have you open sourced any tools or written up your process? I looked at your
Trello board and none of the cards (from a random sample) had any detail
beyond the title or status...

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danielsf
Yea I didn't think anyone would read this Medium post and was lazy about the
Trello board. Filling it out now :)

