Simon Rogers
Government data
Amanda Cox: bringing facts to the people
USAFacts Midterms Map The latest episode of the Data Journalism Podcast is out today, with an interview with Amanda Cox — Head of Special Data Projects at USAFacts, an unrivaled source of public data. She’s also an established data journalist and former editor of the NYT’s Upshot data journalism section. As the winner of multiple … Continue reading
How local journalists can map COVID-19 cases
The Coronavirus outbreak is a fast-moving story for any newsroom to cover, particularly for local reporters trying to help their readers make sense of what’s happening in their area. And for those local reporters wanting to show their readers where cases are, the options for an embeddable local coronavirus map are limited and time-consuming. So … Continue reading
Open data is a right
It’s not that long ago that open data was set to change the world. Governments across the globe opened their vast vaults of data. By mid-2010, it looked like the river of data was unstoppable. First the US launch of data.gov, then data.gov.uk — and then a “tsunami” of open data around the globe, from Bahrain … Continue reading
Documenting Hate: gathering data where there is none
Data journalism has to do one important thing to prove its worth: it has to matter. And providing data where there is none is a key part of that role. This is where Documenting Hate comes in. The project, which includes a number of different news organisations and journalists, is designed to change that by collecting, … 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
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
Ebola in charts: data journalism and the outbreak
It’s a crisis unparalleled in modern times: the biggest outbreak of Ebola ever recorded. So, what do we know about it? Data journalism is about taking the key data, breaking it down and making it accessible. So a major story like this is where getting the data can help us understand it better. So what data … Continue reading
If devolution killed national data, what would Scottish independence do?
The quality of government data is quite possible the last thing on most voters’ minds when Scotland decides whether to leave the UK this Thursday. But, believe it or not, it matters. I wrote this piece back at the Guardian on devolution and open government data. An independent Scotland would probably be the ned of … Continue reading
The new White House open data executive order: how does it compare to the British version?
The White House has released an executive order today committing all federal government data to be open and machine-readable. Signed by President Barack Obama – who was also one of the people behind the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Bill of 2006, back in the day when he was a Senator. That Bill became an … Continue reading
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Simon Rogers 