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.

Automated news-gathering tools aren’t new, but they’re multiplying like crazy and getting quite a bit of attention. Little bots have also turned into interesting remixing devices and distribution channels, especially on Twitter. This week on Source, we’re going 100% bot.

In this OpenNews Learning special, Jonathan Stray presents an equation-free statistics talk on data and the shape of randomness.

Ben Welsh on making data journalism work with that time-honored strategy, the news peg

Last weekend, ten teams participated in a competition to develop newsgames at Editors’ Lab New York, a hackathon organized by the Global Editors Network and The New York Times. Combining the fantastical and playful aspects of gaming with hard news is a hard problem and there are few examples of well-conceived and executed newsgames. Thanks to the hack day, there are now a few more.

Reporters, designers, developers, and editors who worked on the NYT’s Snow Fall explain how they pulled it off.

Last month, ProPublica launched the Living Apart series with an investigation into the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and an interactive map showing the migration of African Americans from 1890-2010.