“Although US Census Bureau data has long been a go-to for journalists looking for data-driven stories, an Aug. 25 panel at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism 2013 convention in Anaheim, California, sought to help journalists take those stories to the next level.
“A lot of stories can be written out of #census data. It’s not easy, but it’s there,” said Armando Mendoza, a program supervisor in the Los Angeles Region of the US Census Bureau.
Mendoza acknowledged that the Census.gov site could be intimidating to visitors.
“If you’re looking for the percentage of married couples, where do you go from here?” he said, after pulling up the site.
For an easier experience, Mendoza recommended journalists use the bureau’s mobile applications, which are easier to navigate.
But on the regular site, users should click on “Data” and “Population Finder” to find data quickly.
“Here you’ve got some information on Alabama.”
Data can be viewed for various geographic boundaries, including sorting it by congressional district. (One of the purposes of the census is to help with drawing congressional boundaries.)
A salivating journalist in the back called out “wow!” when she saw the data for a single district pop up.
The site still has its challenges: Comparing data from multiple census years can’t be done within the site yet — “That’s the difficult part,” Mendoza said — although he believes the bureau will have that enabled by the time 2020 data is available.
(The main census still takes place every 10 years, although starting in 2005, the bureau began doing the American Community Survey, with every two-year snapshots of the population. Due to sample size issues, smaller cities only have released every five years, although larger areas get updates annually.)
In the meantime, the Census website allows data to be downloaded in spreadsheet format, where it can then be merged with data from other years. (See the write-up of the earlier panel on Google Fusion Tables for an introduction to spreadsheets for journalists.)
Mendoza often explores the Census website using Google, in lieu of the site’s own navigation system. He recommends searching for “census quick facts” or “census quick links” and the name of the area in question.
But on the site itself, “American Factfinder,” under the “Data” menu, is the “primary search engine” for data.
Scroll down on the American Fact Finder page and search by street addresses to get hyperlocal data.
And within data sets, some information breaks down into even more complex data sets: Both Asian and Hispanic populations break down into subgroups, for instance, detailing the background and national origins of those who identify as members of those groups.
Note that the bureau does not collect data on sexual orientation at this time. Demographic categories are not set by the bureau, but rather the Office of Management and Budgets.
In addition to the census and ACS, the bureau also does surveys on population, health interviews, crime and consumer surveys.
The bureau also does free data dissemination presentations to explain local data and how to access it.
The bureau would “absolutely, you bet” send out a trainer to teach a whole newsroom to access and census data better, Mendoza said.
“It’s no secret that journalists love Twitter. But according to former broadcast executive-turned-media strategist Steve Schwaid, that love may be misplaced.
“People in the real world do not live on Twitter,” he told journalists Aug. 25 at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism 2013 convention in Anaheim, California.
According to Schwaid, newsrooms should make Facebook — the most popular social media site in the world, with double the number of users as Twitter, as of December 2012 — their first love, instead.
Of course, “the debate is between Facebook and Twitter if you can only do one. You should be doing both.”
Schwaid’s firm, Cedar Rapids-based CJ&N, compiled a report on Facebook usage, which he shared at a panel Saturday morning at EIJ 2013.
According to the report, 22 percent of American women are on Facebook continuously, along with 35 percent of them online several times a day.
“So you have women, who we know are the news drivers … on a platform you should be on, actively engaging them,” Schwaid said.
The numbers are even better in the women 25-to-34 demographic sought after by advertisers: Twenty-five percent of them are Facebook continuously.
“If you know where the people are, go to where the people are. … You want to be there, in whatever way we can,” Schwaid said.
History seems to bear out the approach. According to the CJ&N data:
- Women were four times more likely get their information on the July 2012 Aurora, Colo. movie shootings from Facebook than Twitter.
- Facebook was comparable in popularity to local newspaper websites for the shootings, and twice as popular as local TV websites.
- Nine months later, in April 2013, Facebook was the fifth most-popular source for Boston Marathon bombings information, after national, cable, local TV and national websites.
“Twitter is good for the moment, the breaking story as it happens,” but it’s tough to catch up on it, he said. “Information on Twitter kind of disappears, and if it disappears, you’ve got to reload, and people hate to reload.”
(He’s skeptical about Instagram, as well. News organizations are experimenting with using it, but he says it’s mostly good for teenagers.)
Dana Neves, the news director at WFSB News in Hartford, has worked with Schwaid in the past.
She advised against pushing every single story from a newsroom onto Facebook.
“If people wanted to see a continuous stream of news all day, they’d just stay on your webpage,” she said. “You don’t want to post more than 12 to 14 times (a day).”
But you do want to engage Facebook fans, because that makes the stories that are pushed onto the page more visible, as Facebook’s algorithm favors content from sources that users interact with more regularly.
“Pictures are huge” on Facebook,” Neves said. “You’ll get your most bang for your buck.”
She advised asking fans to share their own photos and to like photos posted to the site.
“I think sharing is underutilized for everybody, and it’s something you can do really, really easily,” she said.
Schwaid agreed.
“You want shares, then you want comments, then you want likes,” he said. “Whatever takes the most effort is what’s most appreciated” by Facebook’s algorithm.
Which brings us back to women:
“Women share, men don’t share,” Schwaid said.
And that’s a reflection of how they consume online media: “Most women have their smartphone by their bed table,” he said. “Any women in here disagree?”
That easy accessibility is a reflection of their usage habits, according to Schwaid.
“If (women) don’t look at Facebook first, they look at their email first,” and then Facebook.
(Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a comparable non-porn, non-sports site for men that most media companies can take advantage of, he said.)
Schwaid also has specific strategies for news organizations hoping to take better advantage of Facebook:
When posting a story to Facebook, don’t just post the web headline into the comment field up top, put in a teaser instead. And make it short, so that readers don’t have to click the dreaded “read more” link.
Avoid obviously canned timed posts.
“People don’t like automated posts” on Facebook, according to Schwaid.
The vocabulary of Facebook — with the ubiquitous “like” button causes problems with sad stories, which users feel awkward about “liking,” even if it’s just that they appreciate something being posted. Instead, Schwaid suggests, offer them an alternative way of thinking about it: “How about some likes for Richard and his snow sculpture?”
He also advises changing the organization’s cover photo regularly, celebrating the local area.
There also needs to be more of a human voice on the Facebook page: No posting photos and the like without captions or explanation and no posting images some might find objectionable — they’ll automatically show up in a Facebook feed, with no chance to opt out of them.
He also recommends engaging with those who post on a news organization’s Facebook wall. Ninety-five percent of all Facebook wall posts, he said, are not answered.
“You’re making a huge mistake,” as posters could be correcting a story, using racism or slander or complimenting the organization. Interacting with them could be as simple as just clicking the “like” for their comment, showing that it’s been read and appreciated. WFSB has someone check their page three to five times a day, just for that purpose.
And sometimes, news organizations need to put out fires.
WFSB’s Sandy Hook coverage included interviews with frightened children, because Neves said they were central to the story.
“If you saw the hundreds of children hiding in the woods and under cars” after the shooting last December, “it painted a picture,” she said.
Nevertheless, viewers were outraged, and jumped on the station’s Facebook page to tell them. Neves and the other crewmembers were asleep, exhausted both mentally and physically from their coverage and missed what was happening, until Schwaid called her up at home and told her to check out their Facebook page.
“It was like no posts we’ve ever seen. We were getting lambasted,” Neves said. Viewers had posted the station manager’s phone number and other corporate executives, urging other viewers to call in and get the entire team that had covered Sandy Hook fired.
Schwaid advised Neves to get on Facebook and to post that she was a mother with a kid the same age as the Newtown children and her logic in interviewing them. Her long Facebook Note worked.
“Even people who said ‘I still think what you did was wrong’ said ‘thank you for telling us why. Hug your kids tonight.'”
To make sure there’s no dead time on the site’s Facebook page — and Facebook is incredibly popular on weekends — WFSB has a social media staffer who specifically works weekends.
They also have a rotating shift of when they post to their page, with “wake-up news” posted between 6 to 8 a.m. each day; news and fun stories posted between noon and 2 p.m.; the busiest time of day, hard news between 4 and 6 p.m.; and, around 9 p.m., stories that catch readers up on what they may have missed.
Schwaid also recommends using Facebook sponsored posts, which he called “the cheapest way to drive markets.”
“According to its host and senior editor, American Public Media’s Marketplace isn’t meant for hardcore business news junkies. Or at least, not exclusively.
Kai Ryssdal told attendees of Aug. 24’s Super Session at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism 2013 convention in Anaheim, California, that the show’s irreverent style of is an intentional effort to be accessible to everyone from his mom and to Wall Street traders.
“I am not the expert. I know a lot about business and the economy now,” he said. But, “as soon as a journalist begins to think he or she is the expert, he is lost. … On a very good day at Marketplace, I am the listener’s proxy.”
Making a show that’s informative for both the general public and Wall Street traders means letting reporters take some liberties with the sometimes-staid public radio formula.
“We want our reporters to go bananas,” said Ryssdal (his name is Norwegian). “They can do what they have to do to tell the story.”
Ryssdal has been known to enforce that accessibility by threatening to kill the microphone for sources who use too much jargon and minutiae on the air.
“The opportunity we have to take these intensely complicated things to make them relatable … it’s a great gig.”
Part of the secret to making business and economics news engaging is not thinking of the stories that way.
“We don’t care about what the Dow does every day,” he said. “It’s a lens for talking about things that matter.”
Although there are some stories that are hard for them to view through that lens — the ongoing Syrian conflict, for instance — it’s usually not a problem.
Among the stories he thinks needs more business coverage: “political dysfunction in Washington.”
Ryssdal didn’t set out to be a journalist. After serving in the Navy and Foreign Service, he and his wife decided to make some changes in their lives, she more successfully than he did. Every business school that she applied to but one accepted Ryssdal’s wife, but none of the law schools he applied to accepted him. So while she began pursuing a degree, he got a minimum wage job at Borders Books.
While shelving a book on internships, he found the info on local NPR station KQED and called them up. The first time he heard his audio and copy read on the air, he was hooked.
“Do what you love,” he said. “It took me two careers and 13 years to find what I loved.”
Still, he counts his military and diplomatic experience as invaluable, both for making him “the most disciplined person in public radio, full stop,” but also for expanding his horizons: “There are things you only learn about this country by leaving this country.”
Since 2005, he’s served as the senior editor and host of Marketplace, which is produced out of Los Angeles. (Its original investor was based out of Long Beach.)
That West Coast perspective gives the show some helpful distance from the major markets and centers of power, he said: “We are not of the Washington ecosphere. We are not of the Wall Street ecosphere.”
Marketplace has 15 full time reporters for all four of its shows, although about 60 percent of their stories come from partner stations.
The show also partners with other newsrooms, including Pro Publica: “Nobody has the resources to do any one project, all in all, by themselves any more.”
Although he’s cautious about the future of journalism — if journalism was a stock, he’d give it a “hold” signal — he sums up his view of it in five words, a standard question for CEOs on his program: “Scary. Promising. Essential. Dynamic. Worthwhile. Boom!””
A Twitter enthusiast — Ryssdal checked Twitter three times in 10 minutes before Saturday’s panel — it’s his only social network.
“I absorb a lot through Twitter,” he said.
Ryasdal tweets personal things, interesting things, and things intended to provoke a response from his 33,000 followers.
But he allows no phones at the dinner table, though.
Embracing the digital future isn’t optional for journalists, in Ryssdal’s mind.
“For journalists today, if you’re not thinking digital, multi-platform, you’re doing it wrong, and you’re doomed,” he said.
And despite journalism’s uncertain future, it’s still vitally important, he told the ballroom full of journalists Saturday night.
“If we, as a society, begin feeling that one person doesn’t matter, then we’re lost,” Ryssdal said. “If you don’t feel you can make a difference, how do you get up in the morning?”
“How many journalists got into journalism because you like math?” Doug Haddix, the assistant vice-president of Editorial Communications at Ohio State University, asked a room full nervous of journalists on Aug. 24 at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism 2013 convention in Anaheim, California. “Me too!”
Actually, Haddix, a self-described nerd, was there to teach convention attendees how to use Google Fusion Tables to tackle math and other data analysis in a nearly painless fashion. (Google Fusion Tables typically cleanly import Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and the software has the virtue of being free.)
“Following the money leads to great stories,” he said. “Even if you don’t like math, the spreadsheet helps us get over that.”
Google Fusion Table spreadsheets automate nearly all of the calculations, and allow them to be done in bulk and allow calculations to work off of the results of other calculations.
Other examples of data sets ripe for this sort of analysis include restaurant health code ratings, government contracts or budgets and various education data-dumps.
The first set of data looked at on Saturday were the 2012 salaries of Major League Baseball players, originally obtained by Investigative Reporters & Editors.
“Lots of stories lurking there in payroll data sets,” Haddix said.
After opening the spreadsheet, he resorted the table several times, by salary, looking for obvious errors made by those who compiled the data.
“Any new data set I get, I like to sort it top to bottom, bottom to top,” he said. “It’s kind of like interviewing a data set.”
Back in Ohio, he’s used the technique to spot incorrect ages inputted for local bus drivers, including alleged five-year-old and 100 year old bus drivers.
“Sorting (spreadsheet data) is really easy — does everyone agree? But it’s very powerful.”
Moving beyond just sorting, Haddix showed off the use of the martini glass-shaped filter icon.
“A filter just goes into, like, 800 players … and (lets users) filter out just what you want to see. Really good for calling out examples.”
Haddix suggested making specialized searches into their own tabs in a spreadsheet, for later use. (He also recommended creating a tab giving the name and Web URL of the source of any data used, just to keep it on hand.)
More advanced inquiries require the use of Pivot Tables.
“Several of you are asking ‘how do we do this, how do we do that,’ but in every case, the answer is ‘pivot tables,'” Haddix said.
Pivot tables “are a very sophisticated type of analysis that’s very easy to do in Google,” much harder to do in Excel, he said.
Pivot tables can do things like sums, averages, medians, all available from a pop-up table in Google Fusion Tables.
“Navigation is, like, the hardest part of” Google Fusion Tables, Haddix said. From there, it’s all downhill.
“Are the Yankees as evil as we think? How much do they pay their players?”
Haddix guided the panel attendees through creating a formula (cells are given Battleship-style coordinates and used as variables in a formula, such as “=D2-C2”) to add up all the salaries of the Yankees.
(Users can also add commas to long numbers in Google Fusion Tables: Click on the column in question, then go up to the Format menu.)
“You can look at ‘what is the median salary of pitchers in the American League vs. the National League,'” a “double-whammy,” of two separate formulas, one for each league.
“The key thing is to make sure your (spreadsheet) formula is always right,” especially before duplicating it across an entire set of data, rather than just one initial example. (The formula in Google Fusion Tables can be made visible by clicking on the answer and looking up and to the left to where the formula’s shown.) Haddix talks through his formulas out loud, to make sure the logic is right.
After double-checking the formula’s logic, it can be mass-applied to all the rows below the first cell by hovering over the bottom right corner of the margin, until the cursor becomes a black cross, and then left-clicking.
“Boom: data ninja!”
Finally, Haddix took data on Americans’ adjusted gross income and showed off Google Fusion Tables’ ability to create charts on the fly.
After clicking on a cell with data, he went to the “Insert” menu at the top of the screen and chose “Chart.” Several sample charts derived from the data instantly popped up, eliciting a “wow” from one member of the audience.
“You can do a lot of sophisticated custom works with these (Google Fusion) charts.”
Haddix dragged the chart off the table (which it was now obscuring) by clicking the icon on the top right and clicking “move to own sheet.”
The data visualizations possible with Google Fusion Tables include pie charts, graphs, scatter graphs and much more.
The program will also do mapping directly from a spreadsheet, addresses have to be all in one cell, rather than having address, city, state, etc. separated.
“A lot of government data already has the latitude and longitude in it. Those are really easy to produce maps of,” Haddix said.
And although the mapping functions will work without a ZIP code, in large metro areas, there’s the possibility of similar street names, and a ZIP code helps ensure accuracy.
All of Haddix’ materials for the session are available online at Go.OSU.edu/FusionTables. The “Fusion Tables Kip hands on” file is the 16-page script for Saturday’s three-hour panel. (Use of the files requires Google Drive access, which is automatic and free with a Gmail account.)
This week, I became the longest-serving employee of the Hesperia Star, just edging out former editor Peter Day’s record. I’ve now been at the Star for eight years and four months. But that’s it: At lunchtime today, I gave my two-week notice to my supervisors at the Daily Press.
It’s been a pleasure covering Hesperia and the Victor Valley for the last eight years. I believe that, on the whole, I’ve done a good job and that the community might be at least a bit better off for my having been here. And that’s a good thing, since it’s home to my in-laws and it was home for me, my wife and our son as well. I’ve worked hard to make sure the commuters who make up the bulk of Hesperia’s working adults can know what their local governments — which have more immediate and profound impacts on them than their representatives in either Sacramento or Washington typically do — are up to while they’re traveling back and forth on the I-15. I’ve covered all but one of the Hesperia service personnel who’ve lost their lives as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I even, accidentally, got a homeless man off the street, with a new home, a new job and a new shot at getting things right.
But eight years is a long time to be on a single beat. Although there’s certainly been a benefit to having personal knowledge of politicians’ previous incarnations or the history of long-running stories like the Ranchero Road Underpass, the Hesperia casino project or the California Charter Academy audit and subsequent indictments, there’s also a danger of falling into habits when it comes to looking at given issues. It’s time for fresh eyes on Hesperia.
And it’s also time for new challenges for me. I will be moving to another Southern California newspaper, where I’ll be responsible for the coverage of 16 school districts, a major change from the hyper-focused coverage I’ve done since 2004. Truthfully, the challenge is a little scary, but that’s a good thing, too: I’ll be a better reporter as a result of being forced to grow and develop new muscles.
(I won’t be disappearing from the Victor Valley entirely, though: Last year, the Hesperia Star office came in 3rd place in People’s Choice at two chili cook offs, two weekends in a row. I think we’ve finally cracked the code, and I’ll be back to try and improve on that ranking. Look for us cooking up a big pot of chili at a cook off near you, this October.)
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