Part of an occasional series offering feedback for journalism as an industry, through observations from news nerds who have recently left the field and still love it.

Data journalists from eight California newsrooms all benefit from a joint data-collection effort. Here’s how the collaboration works to free up more time for local journalism.

We teamed up to build a dashboard that shows two kinds of data: how widespread COVID–19 is in a community, alongside health indicators that show how some people are more at risk. We’ve open-sourced the project so you can use it too.

For the first time in 50 years, Black and other journalists of color (JOC) are waging a public campaign to air newsroom grievances. How do we move away from 50 years of lip service to sustained newsroom diversity? This survey points the way.

As new COVID-19 hot spots popped up across the country and states began to release data by race and ethnicity, the team at Kaiser Health News reported on why the illness was striking Black, Hispanic, and Native Americans so intensely. Here’s how you can use the data to report on your community.

A variety of datasets can help journalists track the spread of COVID-19. But which should you rely on? What’s the difference between them? What are the advantages and disadvantages to each? This guide will walk you through four major COVID-19 data sources: Johns Hopkins University, COVID Tracking Project, USAFacts, and The New York Times.

There are a lot of COVID-19 datasets available, and it can be hard to know how they differ and which ones are most trustworthy. Here’s an overview of current datasets that journalists can rely on for stories.

As the Financial Times developed a newsgame for a series on companies that pursue profit with purpose, Google sheets gave them a way to quickly generate a playable, shareable prototype. Here’s how they did it and what they learned.

VTDigger used Harvard Global Health Institute data to look into local hospitals’ capacity for handling an outbreak. Here’s how you can reproduce the story for your community.

Editorial and product teams are more effective and impactful when they work together, not separately. Here’s a guide to help product teams better understand their news colleagues.

Using data on the more than 12,000 shootings recorded by the NYPD in a 9-year-period, we mapped shootings relative to trauma centers and looked at the relationship between fatality and distance to a trauma center. We also looked at how the number of ICU beds in trauma centers nearby victims affected fatality.

A compilation of research on understanding current pay rates, to help close persistent pay gaps in the industry.

Our regular biweekly roundup.

A starter pack of ideas for increasing the security of your digital footprint.

Our regular biweekly roundup.

On the difficulty of journalism professionals arranging night and weekend care for their children and how employers, allies, conference conveners and other parents can help.

How we ended up with more applicants than we expected, a diverse list of finalists, and a shocking amount of unsolicited positive feedback.

Our regular biweekly roundup.

Our latest biweekly roundup of projects and updates.

Suggestions for getting started, if you want to hack your hiring based on our series.