Simon Rogers
open data
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
US election 2016: How to download county-level results data
If open data means anything, it applies to elections. But yet here we are, a week after the results, and open data around the results is hard to find. It matters because having that data allows us to understand the results better, and what they say about America today. It also means that the data can … 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
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
Data journalism in China
Facts are Sacred has just been published in China. This is the new introduction written for this edition. When Western data journalists think about China, it’s often as the subject of data journalism, rather than a source of it. And you don’t have to search hard for smart examples of interesting work: just take Propublica’s … 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
Data journalism only matters when it’s transparent
When it comes to data journalism, everyone’s a critic. The launch of three major data journalism operations in only a few weeks—the revamped538, Vox, and the New York Times‘ The Upshot—have produced a slew of opinion pieces. They are summarized quite nicely in this piece by Guardian journalist James Ball, but the one critique that sticks with me the most is … Continue reading
We need an open data Olympics. It’s not #Sochi2014
Find out how to scrape a medal table by scrolling down this piece Looking for data around the Olympics? Good luck. By the time the Winter games in Sochi are over, there may be hundreds of Olympians polishing their lovely new medals. But try and access the speed that event was won in or the … Continue reading
Is the ONS really open data?
There’s an interesting piece on the O’Reilly Radar blog this week by Alex Howard on the state of UK open data. Based on a recent report (warning: PDF) by Deloitte’s for the Open Data Institute. It’s interesting because it paints a state of the nation which – according to a blogpost by researcher Harvey Lewis … … Continue reading
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