Data Journalism

Chris Knox

Data Editor at the New Zealand Herald (in August 2020)

chris@functionalvis.com

28 July, 2020

Recap

  • If you can only remember one thing, remember Figure.NZ

  • If you can only remember two things, remember to add /data.csv to Figure.NZ urls

  • Work together - explore Figure.NZ and Figure.NZ Places and find some data that surprises you.

Data processing

  • Make a copy of your original data

Get started with Workbench

  • Create a login
  • Create a chicken chart

Do you need to reshape?

Sometimes data jobs like this:

YearVariableValue
2016tui10
2016kereru15
2016kākā8
2017tui12
2017kereru11
2017kākā13

When what you need is:

Yeartuikererukākā
201610158
2017121113

Then it is time for a reshape (pivot table in spreadsheet land).

  • Select just the columns you need
  • Decide whether it is long to wide or wide to long
  • What’s the row column?
  • What’s the variable column?
  • Have we only got one year per row?

Titles, captions, and annotations

  • You are journalists - embrace that
  • A graph without a source isn’t a graph

What is a graph?

Using the tools at hand; size, colour, shape, and position to represent (encode) the values in the data.

Coloured pencil time

Exercise

Pick a couple of charts from Figure.NZ and remake them.

Datawrapper

  • Workbench Data is built for journalists

  • But the chart options are limited

  • But data can be exported directly from Workbench to Datawrapper

  • Create an account in datawrapper

  • Make sure your workbench workflow is public

  • Grab the data url

Maps

Data wrapper supports 3 types of map

  • Choropleth
  • Symbol
  • Locator

New Zealand is a mess (this doesn’t cover DHBs, Police Districts, Civil Defense, or Fire and Emergency areas)

Ask for help!