The Data Journalism Podcast

Nathan Yau is behind one of the world's most influential data journalism and visualisation websites: Flowing Data. A statistician, Nathan started the site as a resource for students but it has become a go-to destination to find out the latest in data journalism. We discuss why dataviz matters, how to learn R and the quiz of the week. The music this week, made with TwoTone, is the percentage of people sleeping on a weekday in 30-minute intervals, based on the American Time Use Survey 2020

Amanda Cox is Head of Special Data Projects at USAFacts, an unrivaled source of public data in the US. She's also an established data journalist and former editor of the NYT's Upshot data journalism section. As the winner of multiple awards, she's been referred to as the "Michael Phelps of infographics". She chats with Simon and Alberto about her career, how she feels about treemaps and how to put data out into the world. The music this week, made with TwoTone, is the S&P 500 index over time.

The Axios team have spearheaded 'smart brevity', but how does that apply to data journalism and data visualisation? Alberto and Simon chat with the team that makes it happen: Danielle Alberti, Jacque Schrag and Will Chase about how they work and what makes a project 'Axios'.  You can check out the midterms project the team worked on with Google Trends data here.  Here are some more projects mentioned in the episode: Variants tracker 1 million deaths Poll worker map Pie swarm The music for this episode is based on Axios data visual requests, compiled by the team. It was built with TwoTone, a tool that turns data into music.

Archie Tse is the Graphics Director at The New York Times. He has been at The Times since 1995, and he has pioneered graphics reporting, often in person - especially after 9/11, traveling to Iraq to cover the US invasion, and reporting on the capture of Saddam Hussein. He is even credited by some with being an early adopter of identifying Republicans with the colour red and Democrats with the colour blue after his election 2000 maps. Alberto and Simon discuss how his team works, his approach to data visualisation and journalism - and whether he prefers tree maps or pie charts.  The music is created with TwoTone and is based on US honey production data.

One of the most successful published data journalists in the world today, David McCandless has a new book out: Beautiful News. His work is innovative, newsy, current and incredibly popular with readers — but sometimes controversial with what he calls the "chart police".  Alberto and Simon chat with David about why he gets such Marmite-type reactions to his work, how Hans Rosling opened our eyes to the power of data visualisation and the nature of beauty. The music for today's episode is world GDP, made with TwoTone, which turns numbers into tunes.

Election reporting has become one of the most important journalism beats in America as we barrel towards the midterm elections. How can data journalism help? Jessica Huseman has become the face of election reporting in America. Editorial Director at Votebeat, she also owns the data journalism training organistion Friendly State News and previously worked at ProPublica on the Electionland project. Jessica chats with Alberto and Simon about the stakes in election reporting this cycle - and how data makes everything better. The music this episode is made with made with TwoTone and is the sound of Midterm election turnouts from 1790 to 2018. 

Anatoliy Bondarenko is Data editor at Texty.org.ua, an award-winning news and data site in Ukraine, from where he joins Alberto and Simon to discuss his life in a war zone as a data journalist. His team's work to analyse misinformation has won a Sigma data journalism award for best News Application and they are still producing great data journalism today, even as the country is under attack.  Some of his team's pieces include this analysis of satellite images of Russian military bases, an investigation into illegal amber mining in Ukraine  and this interactive on corruption.

How do you make data journalism that matters to people about where they live? In the latest Data Journalism Podcast, Alberto and Simon explore local data journalism with two of the leading practitioners of the field. MaryJo Webster is the data editor for the Star Tribune in Minneapolis and has devoted herself to training data journalists. Ben Welsh is the editor of the Data and Graphics Department at the LA Times, who also leads a new data partnership with the Big Local News Project. The music this episode is made with made with TwoTone and is the sound of American Football, based on 538’s NFL ELO ratings.

Scott Klein leads the teams at ProPublica that work at the intersection of journalism and technology. His teams have been recognized with a Peabody Award, several Online Journalism Awards for General Excellence, Malofiej International Infographics Award medals, the Data Journalism Award Jurors Choice Award, as well as Society for News Design Awards of Excellence, including one special recognition for “defining the design language of data-driven news apps.” Scott is also co-founder of DocumentCloud, a service that helps news organizations search, manage and present their source documents. He sits on the board of the Muckrock Foundation. Scott, Alberto and Simon chat about the state of data journalism in 2021, how ProPublica does it and how journalism is at the forefront of innovation. We also talked about these projects: The Atlantic's Covid tracker Which birds are jerks Using old ships logs to record historic weather A room, a bar and a classroom The music this week is based on holiday search interest, and made with TwoTone.

Matt Daniels and Caitlyn Ralph are just two of the team behind The Pudding, a visual collective of great visual data journalism - where you can find great longform data journalism such as this hunt for the internet’s oldest image, this guide to why women’s pockets are inferior and how many times a character says “cool” in Community. And The Pudding crew also have a commercial arm too: Polygraph, which produces visuals such as the ones you can find on this page on the Google Trends site. Alberto and Simon chat visual journalism with Matt and Caitlyn and find out exactly how you can run a design agency and a cool collective in one go. The music this week is based on the inflation time series index published by the Bureau  of Labor Statistics, and made with TwoTone.