Hello,  my name is...

Dhrumil Mehta (he/him)

Associate Prof. of Journalism @ Columbia U.

Deputy Director of Tow Center

Visiting Associate Prof of Public Policy @ Harvard Kennedy School

dhrumil.mehta@columbia.edu

 @datadhrumil

@dmil

and my name is...

Aseem Shukla (he/him)

Data Reporter/ Developer @ The Philadelphia Inquirer

aseem.a.shukla@gmail.com

aas2345@columbia.edu 

 @ashukla89

ashukla89

Dhrumil Mehta

Currently

• Associate Prof. @ Columbia Graduate School of Journalism

• Deputy Director @ Tow Center for Digital Journalism

• Visiting Associate Prof. @ Harvard Kennedy School

Previously

• Database Journalist, Politics @ FiveThirtyEight

• Software Development Engineer @ Amazon
• Before that:
  • BA in Philosophy + Minor in Cognitive Science
  • MS in Computer Science

Database Journalist, Politics

2014 - http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/job-opening-database-journalist-politics/

2021 - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/were-hiring-a-data-editor/

Data-Driven Storytelling

https://fivethirtyeight.com/contributors/dhrumil-mehta

Data Scraping / Cleaning

Building Software

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

Bots

Internal Workflows

Bots

Reports Election Results

Bots

Lets readers see results that FiveThirtyEight deems unexpected

Expectations are calibrated before results ever start coming in.

Open Data

data.fivethirtyeight.com

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

Quantitative Editing

Research

http://journalism.stanford.edu/cj2016/files/Newsbots.pdf

Computationally analyzing text to better understand media and political environments.

I have a research interest in text analysis

Now your turn!!!

Take a second to write down a bit about who you are! 

• What motivates you to study data journalism...
   
• What are your journalistic interests as we start thinking about forming project groups...
  • beats you'd like to work
  • skills you bring to a group
  • kind of project you want to work on

But there's a catch!

Step 1: Send your questions to your partner via Slack:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-OCX3YKnWzpdrHRdRMnpsKP4TCNvLP9PcloU8DqQlZM/edit?usp=sharing

Step 2: Answer the questions that were sent to you via Slack

Tell us a story about your partner:

• What motivates them to study data journalism...
   
• What are their journalistic interests as we start thinking about forming project groups...beats you'd like to work on, skills you'd like to learn etc...

What have we learned?

Survey Responses

Live Coding

(unless I get nervous or we are short on time)

https://github.com/dmil/reporting-ii/blob/main/pre-class-survey/survey-responses.ipynb
 

Pay special attention to:

- [ ] The questions I ask of the dataset

- [ ] What I do when I don't know some code or forget how to do something

- [ ] What statistical or visual treatments I chose to apply and why

Types of Data Stories

Counting Stuff

Answer a question with data

Support/Oppose a hypothesis

Identify a Phenomenon

Identify a Phenomenon

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-media-really-has-neglected-puerto-rico/

Debunk or Justify Conventional Wisdom

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/

Data-Driven Profile

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/

Lack of Data

Data driven investigative work

Dig for Data

Provide relevant context

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/

Build our own dataset

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

Archiving Data

Explain Calculations

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/not-even-scientists-can-easily-explain-p-values/

Use Innovative Methodology

Use data to inform traditional reporting

The Rare Datapoint

Challenging Official Data

https://gijn.org/2021/06/28/how-local-reporters-in-india-exposed-the-pandemics-true-death-toll/

Huge Data Dump

• Uber
• Election Results
• Census