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Top Ten Tools for Data Journalism 1

May

2013

Data journalism is ever-evolving and so are the tools of the trade. Aside from Microsoft Excel (which I’ve blogged about here and here), these are the tools which are, in my opinion, the most useful for data journalism at the moment. Google Fusion Tables The gateway drug for most data journalists, Google Fusion Tables is ...

Top tips for building digital loyalty from Kate Day, Mark Johnson and Christian Broughton

May

2013

Over the course of the year we have been privileged to hear insights from many working journalists, community managers and social media editors. Here are a sample of the tips from three of the best: Kate Day, social media and engagement editor, The Telegraph Growing a community is above all about understanding the people you ...

Google Fusion Tables for Dummies

Apr

2013

When I say “dummies”, I really mean myself. Just so we’re all aware. Anyway, for my final project I plan to make a fusion table of NIMBY requests in the UK, but before I do that, I figured that I had to practice. I’ve tried making them before with rather disastrous results, so this is ...

How to use Data Wrapper

Apr

2013

I finally was able to visualise my UN Arms Trade Treaty vote data thanks to Mauricio showing me DataWrapper. It’s even easier to use than Many Eyes, for that reason, you’re getting a how-to guide. 1) Same as with Many Eyes, upload your data: 2) Then you’re given the ability to check your ...

A step-by-step guide to Many Eyes

Apr

2013

After a few weeks of leaving my UN Arms Trade Treaty vote data alone, it finally came to me: I overcomplicated the process. For what I wanted to do – input the data and make a bubble chart – I never needed the entire list of countries; I just needed the numbers. So with my ...

Using Many Eyes to create data visualisations

Feb

2013

Many Eyes is one of the better free online tools for making quick data visualisations – here is our guide to putting one together. The Interhacktives were introduced to it in our latest class with James Ball. It’s a pretty foolproof process so I thought I would take you through it: Firstly, you need to ...

You’d Better Check Yourself: Free Analytics Tools For Twitter 4

Jan

2013

So, we all know how to use Twitter but how do we know whether anything we’re doing is being seen by anyone? And what do you do if you’ve been mindlessly using it for months with no actual strategy? Twitter doesn’t have it’s own analytics service but it probably will in the not too distant ...

Social media tools to use (more) in 2013

Jan

2013

Being a student puts you in touch with new resources, but it also makes you wonder how people in real newsrooms are actually using tools to reach out to readers. So I asked some of my former colleagues what are the most interesting tools they will try to use more frequently in 2013. The three ...

A Beginner’s Pre-Guide to Data Journalism 2

Dec

2012

So, you want to be a data journalist? All well and good, but it’s important to remember to learn to crawl before you can walk, and luckily we had the Guardian’s James Ball to guide us every baby-step of the way in the form of the essential pre-guide to data journalism: Microsoft Excel. Excel is ...

An Interhacktive’s live-blogging debut

Nov

2012

Last week saw my first ever live-blogging attempt, a Halloween live-blog for Islington Now. It was an opportunity to cover something which was hyper-local, with lots of events to report, but also light-hearted and fun, so any mistakes wouldn’t matter as much. I used a live-blogging plugin for WordPress, which I understand was possible because ...

Dog sh*t and data – playing with Google Fusion tables

Nov

2012

I’ve heard a lot about Google Fusion Tables over the last few weeks. Simon Rogers, editor of the Guardian Datablog, must have mentioned them 10 times when he came to talk at City last month. Some of our other lecturers, including Paul Bradshaw and Gary Moskowitz have also mentioned them in class or in passing. As a fledgling interactive ...

Your website, now illegal: how to comply with the EU Cookie Law 4

Apr

2012

A new EU law prohibiting websites from placing cookies without user permission is set to become active in just over a month. Not only will this essentially make statistics derived from cookie-based tracking essentially worthless, it will also mean that websites using Google Analytics for stats gathering will be violating the law once it comes ...

How See Tickets outraged 100,000 BBC Radio 1 listeners

Apr

2012

On the weekend of June 23, nearly a hundred thousand people will descend upon the Hackney Marshes for BBC Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend music festival. Big names such as Jay-Z, Rihanna, Florence + The Machine, Jessie J, Deadmau5 and David Guetta have been booked for the free, two-day show, with the British music-loving population clamouring ...

Social Media Editor for the Hackney Post: Week 1

Mar

2012

By Abby Young-Powell This week I have been Social Media Editor for the Hackney Post. It has been stimulating, hard work and a learning curve. Here is some of what I have learnt so far… Those who don’t know may (wrongly) assume that it’s an easy job, to Tweet for a living. So you’ve just ...