(1) Join this Slack:

https://ledeprogram.slack.com/

Star the following channels:

#data-ms-2022

#data-ms-2022-discussion

#data-ms-2022-coding

 

(2) Login to canvas and:

https://courseworks2.columbia.edu/

  • add your name pronunciation and pronouns
  • find the "Install Party" assignment and follow the instructions there.
     

If you have any questions, just raise your hand 🖐!

Welcome! Let's get rolling!

 

 

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

Today

- Install Party


- Meet Dhrumil

- Meet each other! (Introductions & Survey Responses)

- Syllabus Overview


- Data Journalism: Possibilities And Limitations


- Project Brainstorming

- Homework Overview


Highlights:

Currently

  • Associate Prof. @ Columbia Graduate School of Journalism

  • Visiting Associate Prof. @ Harvard Kennedy School

 

Previously

  • Database Journalist, Politics @ FiveThirtyEight

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

Database Journalist, Politics

Data-Driven Storytelling

 

 

 

Data Scraping / Cleaning

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

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

Quantitative Editing

Research

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!

You have 5 minutes to create a 5-questions to get to know one other person in the room who you will have to introduce to the class

 

 

You will be split into:

1) Survey Makers

2) Interview Takers

 

Survey Makers (5 question survey)

Multiple Choice

Which of the following reporting topics interests you most? (1) Healthcare (2) Education (3) Agriculture
 

Scale

On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being most sure. How sure are you about what your thesis project will be about?

Yes/No

Are you an interested in New York City issues?

1-phrase Answer

Where did you grow up?

 

 

 

Interivew Takers

 

5 open-ended interview questions

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

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

Archiving Data

Explain Calculations

Use Innovative Methodology

Use data to inform traditional reporting

The Rare Datapoint

Challenging Official Data

Huge Data Dump

  • Uber
  • Election Results
  • Census

Homework Review

Project Brainstorm

 

Find a partner

Chat about your ideas

Toss them in our brainstorm doc

 

https://forms.gle/dJue4zuAFmewcwdw6

Reporting II - Day 1 (2021)

By Dhrumil Mehta

Reporting II - Day 1 (2021)

Saying hello to students

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