The problem with data journalism

The recent boom in “data-driven” journalism projects is exciting. It can elevate our knowledge, enliven statistics, and make us all more numerate. But I worry that data give commentary a false sense of authority since data analysis is inherently prone to bias. The author’s priors, what he believes or wants to be true before looking at the data, often taint results that might appear pure and scientific. Even data-backed journalism is opinion journalism. So as we embark on this new wave of journalism, we should be aware of what we are getting and what we should trust... Data analysis is more of an art than a science.

Read more at Quartz

Twitter Is Selling Access to Your Tweets for Millions

Twitter’s data mining initiative has similarities with LinkedIn’s Recruiter program, which charges businesses as much as $8,000 per log-in to access the site’s full database of 238 million resumes. While LinkedIn manages Recruiter internally and generates massive revenue from it, Twitter has chosen a more hands-off approach that provides a small but straightforward revenue stream while leaving the major infrastructure costs to third parties.

Read more at TIME.

Why data without a soul is meaningless

The problem with data is that the way it is used today, it lacks empathy and emotion. Data is used like a blunt instrument, a scythe trying to cut and tailor a cashmere sweater.

The idea of combining data, emotion and empathy as part of a narrative is something every company — old, new, young and mature — has to internalize. If they don’t, they will find themselves on the wrong side of history.

“Data needs stories, but stories also need data. Data, when its put up in front of you as a number, it gets stripped of the context of where the data came from, the biases inherent in it, and the assumptions of the models that created it.”

The symbiotic relationship between data and storytelling is going to be one of the more prevalent themes for the next the few years, starting perhaps inside some apps and in the news media.

Read more at Gigaomo

10 things every journalist should know in 2013

Here are 10 things every journalists should know in 2013.

1. It's all about skills, skills, skills

Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news at the New York Times, has one piece of advice for journalists wanting to get ahead: "Skills, skills, skills, skills, skills, skills."

"Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it is just not enough any more to just be able to turn a phrase, or do the traditional kinds of reporting," he told Journalism.co.uk. "You need to be a little bit of a jack of all trades; you need to be able to shoot and cut video or do audio or code or do data analysis," he said.

"And it's even more important now than it ever has been in this shrinking industry to have those kinds of skills."

Steve Herrmann, editor of BBC News online, agrees. He looks for those with skills in social media, data journalism and with "an ability to appreciate the importance of still pictures, of video, graphics and audio in communicating and telling stories".

"It's not necessarily being expert in all of those things," Herrmann said, "but being aware of their importance and appreciating when they can be really effective and have impact."

9. Online journalism is mobile first

Mobile is an important traffic driver for news sites, we are regularly reminded. At particular times of the day the Guardian's mobile traffic exceeds desktop traffic; on an average weekday 24 per cent of readers of BBC News access via mobile, with that rising to a record of 30 per cent on the day of the US election last November, the BBC Editors' blog reported. And more than a third of New York Times traffic now comes from phones and tablets, according to this post by Martin Belam.

But while some sites have a mobile first strategy when thinking about how to present data visualisations, features and multimedia, many journalists have desktop in mind when creating the story.

In a presentation at December's news:rewired digital journalism conference, Belam said: "Think reader before editor. Think software before content. Think simplicity before features. Think mobile before desktop."

Read more here

Meet the New Boss: Big Data

For more and more companies, the hiring boss is an algorithm. The factors they consider are different than what applicants have come to expect. Jobs that were once filled on the basis of work history and interviews are left to personality tests and data analysis, as employers aim for more than just a hunch that a person will do the job well. Under pressure to cut costs and boost productivity, employers are trying to predict specific outcomes, such as whether a prospective hire will quit too soon, file disability claims or steal.

Personality tests have a long history in hiring. What's new is the scale. Powerful computers and more sophisticated software have made it possible to evaluate more candidates, amass more data and peer more deeply into applicants' personal lives and interests.

The new hiring tools are part of a broader effort to gather and analyze employee data. Globally, spending on so-called talent-management software rose to $3.8 billion in 2011, up 15% from 2010, according to research firm Gartner.

It isn't just big companies that are turning to software for hiring help. Richfield Management LLC, a Flint, Mich., waste-disposal firm that employs 200 garbage collectors, was looking for ways to screen out applicants who were likely to get hurt and abuse workers' compensation.

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What Data says about us

"Big" data is something of a misnomer. It's colossal. From the beginning of recorded time until 2003, we created 5 billion gigabytes of data. In 2011 the same amount was created every two days. By 2013 that time will shrink to 10 minutes. The amount of information we take in in a single day is more than someone living in the 16th century would view in his entire lifetime.

The book from which this excerpt is drawn, The Human Face of Big Data, is created by Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt.

Read more here

More Data Beats Better Algorithms — Or Does It?

If you have to choose, having more data does indeed trump a better algorithm. However, what is better than just having more data on its own is also having an algorithm that annotates the data with new linkages and statistics which alter the underlying data asset. That way, the addition of each new algorithm radically improves the underlying data asset, just like the addition of a sensory input improves the way we experience the world around us.

http://allthingsd.com/20120907/more-data-beats-better-algorithms-or-does-it/

The Data Journalism Handbook

The Data Journalism Handbook launched this past weekend at the School of Data Journalism, based at the 2012 International Journalism Festival in Perugia. It is a one stop shop for reporters interested in learning about data journalism and includes a free, open sourced web version so anyone can access it.

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Journalists connect the dots between data & reporting at Columbia J-school hackathon

Data journalism was recently singled out by an Online News Association panel in New York as one of the core skills for journalists. Students and journalists, however, often admit to being intimidated by data and coding. Both programmers believe journalists need to understand data if they’re going to succeed in their field. Read more here

Data Journalism at the Guardian

Data journalism has been around as long as there’s been data - certainly at least since Florance Nightingale's famous graphics and report into the conditions faced by British soldiers of 1858.

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