Numbers to Narrative

Telling stories with Data

(NU Career Trek Edition)

 

Dhrumil Mehta

Database Journalist, Politics - FiveThirtyEight

Democracy and Technology Fellow - Ash Center @ HKS

 

dhrumil.mehta@fivethirtyeight.com  

 @datadhrumil

@dmil

Unlocking Quant Skills

Data in the Classroom

Data in Journalism

Path

  • Northwestern:
    • BA in Philosophy + Minor in Cognitive Science
    • MS in Computer Science
    • Knight Lab Student Fellow
  • Political Framing + USA Today + APSA
  • MediaCloud & Framing - Berkman Center
  • Software Development Engineer @ Amazon
  • Democracy and Technology Fellow @ Ash Center - Harvard Kennedy School
  • Database Journalist @ FiveThirtyEight + Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School

Database Journalist, Politics

Part 1: The Journey

Day One

Lessons

Month One

Year One

More Writing / Reporting / Picking Up the Phone

Building Software

 

Elections 2016

More Reporting &

Writing  

&

Data

 

Bots, scrapers, watchers, and integrated workflow

Open Data

https://www.datajournalismawards.org/project-listing/?project_id=2082

Code that is journalism - not code for journalism

Reflecting

What's Next

Part 2: Case Studies

Types of Data Stories

Huge Data Dump

  • Uber
  • Election Results
  • Census

Answer a question with data

Support/Oppose a hypothesis

Identify a Phenomenon

Debunk or Justify Conventional Wisdom

Data-Driven Profile

Lack of Data

Data driven investigative work

Dig for Data

Provide relevant context

Build our own dataset

  • With Code / Scrapers
  • By Hand
  • By Survey Tool

Explain Calculations

Use Innovative Methodology

Use data to inform traditional reporting

The Rare Datapoint

My Lessons

Coding Is Journalism

To What End?

 

dhrumil.mehta@fivethirtyeight.com  

 @datadhrumil

@dmil

 

http://fivethirtyeight.com/contributors/dhrumil-mehta/​

Numbers to Narrative (NU Career Trek)

By Dhrumil Mehta

Numbers to Narrative (NU Career Trek)

Telling stories with data.

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