Project GDELT and the Problem of Decontextualized Data
Two recent FiveThirtyEight data journalism stories on Nigerian kidnappings use GDELT data in ways that don’t account for that dataset’s sources and biases. Here’s why that matters.
Roundup What “Open” Really Means for 538, Vox, and The Upshot
- By Erin Kissane
- Trei Brundrett, Amanda Cox, Andrei Scheinkman, Derek Willis
- FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times, Vox Media
Now that FiveThirtyEight, Vox, and the Upshot have been live for a few weeks, we’re taking a closer look at the data, and especially the code, that each has released.
Roundup Event Roundup, May 5
- By Erika Owens
Hackathons this weekend in Argentina and Brussels, plus Hacks/Hackers meetups around the world this month.
Learning What If the Data Visualization Is Actually People?
Sarah Slobin discovers that all the facts and numbers didn’t add up to the humans in her story.
Project Meet Bloomberg’s Dataview
One of our most recent works, “How Americans Die,” is an instance of what we call a “dataview.” The impetus behind dataview was a hope to provide clear and concise storytelling, while giving the supporting data more prominence and explorability.
Project Finding Evidence of Climate Change in a Billion Rows of Data
Seeking to contribute to the climate change conversation, the team at Enigma started to brainstorm ways we could produce a data-driven story on how climate change has played out in the United States. Browsing through NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, we discovered the Global Historical Climatology Network which collects, aggregates, and standardizes daily weather information from more than 90,000 weather stations, dating as far back as 1800. While we come across many incredible public datasets in our work at Enigma, this one immediately stood out for its remarkable combination of geographic granularity and temporal breadth
Project Introducing PourOver and Tamper
PourOver is an attempt to standardize an efficient and extensible model of client-side collection management, weakening reliance on server-side collection operations. Even on modern networks with beefy machines, the roundtrip to a backend is irredeemably slow for responsive UIs. Users aren’t encouraged to explore when every manipulation triggers a half-second pause. With PourOver, the server-trip bottleneck is gone because collection operations are done on the client. The hardest limitation becomes render speed, much simpler to improve upon than the latency of the internet.
Project Introducing FourScore
At the 2014 OpenNews code convening, we took on the task of making a reusable system that could allow other organizations to produce something sentiment grids with a bare minimum of technical know-how. The result was FourScore, a library that allows you to set a few configuration options to produce your very own interactive sentiment grid. It even works in IE8, and maybe doesn’t totally not work in IE7.
Project Introducing Landline and Stateline
Today we’re releasing code to make it easier for newsrooms to produce maps quickly. Landline is an open source JavaScript library for turning GeoJSON data into browser-based SVG maps. It comes with Stateline, which builds on Landline to create U.S. state and county choropleth maps with very little code out-of-the-box.
Project Introducing Pym
- By Jeremy Bowers, Alyson Hurt
- Jeremy Bowers, Tyler Fisher, Christopher Groskopf, Alyson Hurt
- NPR, OpenNews
NPR’s Visuals team breaks down Pym, a new responsive-iframe library and the first project launched from the OpenNews Code Convening.
Roundup Event Roundup, Apr 14
- By Erika Owens
Excited about maps after State of the Map? FOSS4G deadline is April 15, plus Chicas Poderosas comes to Miami this weekend.
Event What We Learned from the First-Ever OpenNews Code Convening
When we talk with newsrooms about open-sourcing their work, often the response we get is that they’d love to, but deadline pressures keep the last-mile work and documentation that signifies a good open-source project on the to-do list. So at OpenNews, we came up with a simple proposition: What if we free up that time by getting developers out of the deadline grind? Let’s put them up for a few days, feed them, and help get the work done.
Learning How to Use the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey like a Pro
Paul Overberg explains base tables and how to get the best data from them (hint: ask good questions!).
Tool What Heartbleed Means for Newsroom Technology
If your websites have SSL enabled (when users log in, for example), or if you use VPN software to secure your network, or if you run your own mail servers, your newsroom might be affected by Heartbleed. Here’s what to do next.
How-to Getting a Job in Journalism Code
Job hunting can be an intimidating process, especially for recent grads or people looking to break into a new field. The journalism tech community is a welcoming place for new faces and Sisi Wei and Jeremy B. Merrill want to help you overcome any fears and apply for jobs and internships in this growing and evolving field.
Roundup Event Roundup, Mar 31
Today is deadline day for Wikimania, plus get your Data Journalism Awards entries and Open Source Bridge proposals in by Friday.
How-to A Botmaking Primer
Not sure where to begin with this whole bot thing? Joseph Kokenge is here to help you get started with botmaking 101.
