
The Data Journalism Handbook - kreutz
http://datajournalismhandbook.org/
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asanwal
Where can people with Data Journalist skills be found? We're trying to hire
what we're calling a Data Editor (similar I believe) where the role is about
using our data to tell compelling data-driven stories. It requires the ability
to analyze and ask questions of our data (in MS Excel at a minimum) to
ultimately develop short data-driven narratives of their findings.

While we've found folks who are amazing at the data analysis part or the
writing part, never have the two met. Either we're looking for a unicorn or
simply not looking in the right places? Any recs on where to look?

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msy
I do what you're describing, as a community it's a real mix of backgrounds.
Personally I think you're best off looking for someone with an editorial
background and a willingness or interest in the technical side than the other
way around, a knack for spotting a story is a harder skill to learn. The other
thing is that presenting those stories in anything other than words is another
skillset entirely, both in terms of design and development. Finding someone
that can do all 3 very well is a tall order. More recent grads coming out of
journo school increasingly have some programming or stats proficiency, that
would be the best place to start looking. The other place would be the more
hard (as in both high quality and more technically/theory focussed)
graphic/information design courses.

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stdbrouw
Dunno, the trouble with a lot of data journalism that currently exists, is
that the people doing it don't have a strong statistical background and tend
to forget things like using null hypotheses and regression analysis and take
the things they find in data at face value much too often. So sure, teach a
writer to do data analysis, but when you do, _really_ teach them.

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msy
I couldn't agree more. Serious data journalism is essentially a subset of
investigative journalism and it really takes a team - qualified statisticians,
domain experts, journalists and visual designers.

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rickmb
Seriously, "wobbing" is now becoming an internationally used term?

The word is derived from the acronym WOB, which stands for "Wet Openbaarheid
Bestuur", a relatively recent Dutch law that obliges government institutes to
make government documents available upon request. This law is systematically
being sabotaged by all layers of government, to the point of intimidating
people who dare to make such a request.

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stdbrouw
Couple of Dutch co-authors of that book, so it's much more likely that it sort
of slipped past the editors :-) In the US people are more likely to talk about
FOI or FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests.

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idm
I think this is a great idea, but the web version of the document is
surprisingly difficult to navigate and read. In fact, it's downright
unpleasant. I understand why it is available as a hardcopy version through a
publisher, but I wonder why the PDF isn't available for web use.

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lilianabounegru
Hi. We're working on making the source code that was used to generate the web
version and the ebook available on Github soon. With that anyone can easily
generate a copy of the book in any format of their choice.

Liliana

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idm
Great stuff! Thank you very much for your reply, and I look forward to it.

