Simon Rogers
Simon Rogers
Tilegrams: Make your own cartogram hexmaps with our new tool
This US election season, you will see a lot of maps. And mostly, they will look kind of like this: And what’s wrong with that? It is, after all, what the United States looks like. But try and find Rhode Island or Connecticut. Tricky, isn’t it? But it’s not just finding the states that’s difficult. … Continue reading
Election DataBot: harnessing the power of the matrix
Image from Giphy There’s no shortage of public data out there around the election — FEC filings, demographic data from the census, even search data from Google… the list is long and complicated. But imagine if, like Neo in The Matrix, you could plug yourself into that election feed and get a complete grasp of all the data … Continue reading
Building an Alternative Olympic Medal Table
Since the modern Olympics began nearly 120 years ago, they have been dissected and evaluated through every possible angle. But data journalism is about looking at the world anew through the fresh lens of facts and numbers. With the Games in full swing, all eyes are on the medal table: who’s winning and which countries … Continue reading
How we made a VR data visualization
Isn’t the best journalism always immersive? Whether it’s Walter Kronkite’s journalistic take on history “You are There” from the 1950s or Declan Walsh’s mobile phone reporting from Syria this week, the best journalism makes you feel like you are part of the story. You care what happens. Virtual Reality is a powerful tool in making … Continue reading
Data Journalism Awards 2016: what the winners tell us about the state of the data nation
What does data journalism look like in 2016? The winners of the data journalism awards — announced today — give us a great sense of where the industry is right now. I was lucky enough to be director of the awards this year, working with the great Paul Steiger to winnow down the record 471 … Continue reading
Podcast: It’s never been a better time to be a data journalist
If you haven’t caught it, Partially Derivative is a great podcast about data, science and everything in between. I was lucky enough to get invited to chat with Jonathon Morgan about the state of data journalism today, the role of VR and exactly what I do at Google. Listen to the podcast
Data journalism matters more now than ever before
Here’s an interesting thing: data journalism is the mainstream. Or indeed: Data journalism is just journalism. It’s been threatening to do this ever since I wrote this piece. Now it’s everywhere. If 2014 was the year that saw new outlets develop their own brands of data journalism (think 538, The Upshot, Vox…), and 2015 was the … Continue reading
Three refugee datasets for the 19 Million Project
For the next two weeks the 19 Million Project will meet in Rome to wrestle with how data, design and journalism can best tell the heartbreaking stories produced by the refugee crisis which has sprung out of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The project brings a pretty brilliant cross-functional team together to see what they can make of the … Continue reading
We need a Data Journalism Archive. Before it becomes just another 404 error
Are we about to enter a dark age of data journalism? The internet has made it possible to see the world’s information without moving a muscle, not matter how old that information is. You can absorb the first news page of The Guardian, from May 1821, which had data journalism at its heart, even then. … Continue reading
How to make a multi-screen interactive
Sometimes you’ll want to join more than one map, chart or other visual together — but if you’re not a developer it can be a little tricky. This is where the iframe scaffolder by Paris-based developer from Journalism++ Pierre Romera comes in. I made this map — used by Mother Jones — using the tool, which made it simple to … Continue reading
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