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.
Today I'm talking about how the WNYC Data News team has done some quick-turnaround projects, especially around Sandy, at the IRE Computer Assisted Reporting conference.
Here are the slides for my presentation, including links I reference.
I also wrote a quick outline about our thinking on how we could best serve our audience during the storm, called "Predicting Questions, Building Answers."
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:
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.