Sara Simon
Sara Simon began her journalism career as a web developer at Vermont Public Radio. She later worked as a software engineer at The New York Times, then moved fully into a reporting role as an investigative data reporter with Spotlight PA. In September 2020, Sara joined The COVID Tracking Project, where she’s been focused on data quality efforts, and she’s currently preparing to head to graduate school to study the history of U.S. government technology.
Sara’s work on Source
Projects
Articles by Sara
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Exit Interviews: Sara Simon
“I suspect the source of so much problematic behavior in this industry is a predatory response to … steadfast young dreams.”
Posted onPart 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.
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Tracking Vermont’s Cabinet Votes, the Hands-Free Way
How Vermont Public Radio builds with Google spreadsheets
Posted onLittle Vermont’s been in the limelight lately—C-SPAN style. Between Sen. Bernie Sanders, now more well-known now than ever, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, the senior-most member of the Senate Judiciary committee, my team here at Vermont Public Radio knew that the new administration’s cabinet nomination process would be of key interest our audience. We knew we wanted to track our senators’ roles throughout.
I tested how well ChatGPT can pull data out of messy PDFs (and here’s a script so you can too)