SXSW Talk on Sensors & Journalism

At SXSW 2013 in Austin, I'm moderating and speaking on a panel looking at how sensors can play a role in journalism called "Sensoring the News: Detector-Driven Journalsm."

Joining me on the panel are:

Sarah Williams, Assistant Professor and Director the Civic Data Design Project at MIT. Sarah's slides are here.

Nadav Aharony, co-founder and CEO at Behavio.

Matt Waite, Professor and head of the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Matt's video presentation is here.

And my slides are here.

Designing a Course in Data Journalism

More data journalism classes are on the way, at little schools and big ones. I'm hearing this through the grapevine. Several grapevines today, in fact. And I think it's fantastic.

When asked what such a course might look like, I point folks to Brian Boyer's theoretical and amazing Hacker Journalism 101. Journalism needs more journalists who can code, and this is a great way to get there.

That's programming, though, you say. We can't teach programming in a journalism class!

You can, and you should. Basic programming will help journalists understand and deal with data used by cities, cops, politicians, agencies, campaigns, companies, banks, stores, non-profits, advocacy groups and just about any other source you can think of.

Knowing how to code, even a little, is like having a solar calculator for that database you just scored.

In addition to programming, here are some of my favorite topics for classes, readings or workshops:

  • Finding data for your stories
  • Finding stories in your data
  • How to tell one story well
  • All data is dirty ... and what to do about that
  • Basic stats
  • Percentage points for journalists
  • Mapmaking made easy
  • Lying and truthing with easily-made maps
  • When maps shouldn't be maps
  • Basic chartbuilding
  • Lying and truthing with charts and graphs
  • Did I mention programming?

And I'd have 'em code something. Every week.

What have I left out? Add comments below and I'll update this post -- and my advice to others.

Photo: My daughters in a UW-Madison lecture hall where I studied geography. Both of them have dabbled in coding.