Ryan McNeill is the London-based deputy editor for the Reuters global data journalism team. He’s also the winner of the 2026 American Statistical Association Award for Excellence in Statistical Reporting. The award is meant to honor, "members of the media for their presentation of the science of statistics and its role in public life". McNeill’s reporting has helped audiences understand the statistics behind global events. He's done extensive reporting on the Sudanese civil war and how that conflict produced the world’s largest hunger crisis. Recent reporting has focused on the Ukraine war, the uncovering of mass graves in Syria, and the Iran war. Before joining Reuters, McNeill reported for The Dallas Morning News, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and The Oklahoman.
Episode Description
Communicating data to the public is difficult; you want to make sure you get the statistics right while also communicating clearly. That pressure is compounded in a newsroom where journalists, many of whom are generalists, are trying to communicate stats clearly on a tight deadline. The American Statistical Association recognizes the best in statistical journalism each year, and this year’s winner is Ryan McNeill on this episode of Stats and Stories.
Full Transcript
Rosemary Pennington
Communicating data to the public is difficult. You want to make sure you get the statistics right while also communicating clearly, that pressure is compounded in a newsroom where journalists, many of whom are generalists, are trying to communicate stats clearly on a sometimes tight deadline. The American Statistical Association recognizes the best in statistical journalism each year, and this year's winner is on this episode of Stats and Stories, where we explore the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. I'm Rosemary Pennington. Stats and Stories is a production of the American Statistical Association in partnership with Miami University's Departments of Statistics and Media, Journalism, and Film. Joining me is regular panelist John Bailer, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Miami University. Our guest today is Ryan McNeill, the London-based deputy editor for the Reuters Global Data Journalism team. He's also the winner of the 2026 American Statistical Association Award for Excellence in Statistical Reporting. The award is meant to honor quote members of the media for their presentation of the science of statistics and its role in public life. McNeill's reporting has helped audiences understand the statistics behind global events. He's done extensive reporting on the Sudanese civil war and how that conflict produced the world's largest hunger crisis. Recent reporting has focused on the Ukraine war, the uncovering of mass graves in Syria, and the Iran war. Before joining Reuters, McNeill reported for the Dallas Morning News, South Florida Sun Sentinel, and the Oklahoman. Ryan, thank you so much for being here, and congratulations!
Ryan McNeill
Thank you. It's great to be here, and it's a great honor. Thank you.
John Bailer
You know, I got to start with the the simple question. How how did you become a data journalist?
Ryan McNeill
Ah, that's that's an interesting question. So, if I go back a long ways, my dad was a mechanical engineer, and when I went to university at Oklahoma State. I thought I was going to be a computer engineer. Now, then, you know, I took a couple of years of prerequisites, and and I took a number of programming languages. And then, you know, being the mature 1819, 20-year-old I was, I realized that, you know, going to quantitative chemistry five days a week is is not that fun, and I wasn't a terribly great student at the time. And I, you know, ended up switching to journalism because I, you know, my sister had mentioned you know you read like three papers a day every day. Maybe you would like that, and as part of that, Oklahoma State Journalism School Professor Stan Cutter taught a data journalism class, computer-assisted reporting. We called it then, and it was Fox Pro, and a little bit of I think we were using Excel by then, and so that kind of you know when I started at the Oklahoman, there was a data editor there by the name of John Perry, who would go on to become a legend in sort of this world. And he took me to first conference. He saw that I had an interest in this kind of thing, and took me to the National Institute of Computer Assisted Reporting conference. I think it was in Charlotte. And back then, there were, you know, one of the things that you would do is is people would bring printout like printouts of big investigation they had done, and then they would, you know, back when we did this kind of thing, and put it across a big paper, and so you could see or across a big table, and you could see all the work that everybody was doing around the country, and and I just remember thinking, oh my gosh, there's a lot of potential here to do a different kind of journalism than I imagined. And it also so happened that because I had had those programming classes at university as part of that engineering major, the failed engineering major, you know, I knew how I at least understood concepts of programming, object-oriented programming, things like that, and so I was able to kind of go back to that and pick things up. And but really, it was, you know, it was going to that first NICAR conference and seeing the kind of work that was being done across the country, and sort of how data and statistical analysis opened up new ways to investigate government and other institutions, so it's probably. A long answer, but that's generally how I got there.
Rosemary Pennington
Yeah, yes, I remember the old computer assisted reporting days. So you sort of talked about sort of how how things were when you got started, but I'm looking at one of the reporter stories that you were recognized for by the ASA in this award, which is you know counting the dead who were killed as part of this this famine in Sudan, and I wonder if you could talk about how your work has changed over time. Sort of given kind of this this beginning that you've already mapped out for
Ryan McNeill
us. I think the biggest change in my career was when I moved to London with the idea that you know, because a lot of computer assist this idea of computer assisted reporting, data reporting, whatever you want to say, you know, it sort of got its start in the United States. You know, obviously, it's you know grew quickly in places like Denmark and and other European countries, but you know at at Reuters I think is you know our team was very was mostly in New York and very and and we're an international news organization and we wanted to try and you know push this kind of work into other parts of the world, and so moving to London and particularly focusing, kind of by accident, on conflicts and atrocity, and that means that you are. I mean, there's not a lot of data in this kind of world, right? And so you have to come up with ways to generate data, because at Reuters, it's really important for our investigations that we have empirical backbones. You know that we don't just you're not just waving your hand and saying this thing is happening. We want to show that it's happening quantitatively, and so you know, it it it it requires sort of a shift in thinking because we're quite spoiled in the U.S. Even though the like the FOIA system, open records laws are are broken in a lot of places. I've got an FOI request to the city of New York that's eight years old. I noticed today I threatened to send them a birthday cake in its honor, but it is it's easier to get access to a broad array of data because of those open government laws. You know that doesn't exist in Sudan or Syria or wherever, and so I think that was the that was sort of the biggest shift in my career that I I think was having to start thinking about ways to cover stories where there's no data.
John Bailer
Yeah, that that that seems like that could potentially be a problem for a data journalist.
Ryan McNeill
Yeah, yeah, it's very difficult.
John Bailer
Yeah, so I you know, I was. This is so much fun to talk about this. I'm, I, you're, you're part of a data journalism team, and I'm, I'm just curious who's on the team. I mean, you talked about. I assume someone that can help you with acquiring data, particularly these data that's that, that may be somewhat harder to come by. But can you talk about some of the members of the team and and the work that they do.
Ryan McNeill
Yeah, and you know it's shifted a lot through the years, and and particularly recently. And I can kind of lead up to that. You know, I started at Reuters in 2012 2012, and you know most of us were doing largely what I guess would be viewed as traditional data science type work. Traditional reporters covering different kinds of beats, and you know we picked up and added you know sort of this data science element over time, and now you know of course we're branching out into geospatial analysis, use of satellite data, and also visual investigations, which is you know sort of a burgeoning field of using open source methods from from social media videos and pictures to satellite data to try and piece together what's happened in some place, and you know, I think all of those things, though, are rooted in data, and and and and should be viewed as as data, right? And you know, for example, satellite imagery. You know, it's not just when we analyze that; it's not just a pretty picture. There's data in there that can, you know, help us and you know make sense of what we're looking at, and you know, also we have people who have to be pretty creative about how they use data and finding new ways to tell stories.
Rosemary Pennington
Speaking of that, I'm. Looking at one of the stories that you were involved in, that's that was examining the way during the Assad era, very these mass graves were being hidden in Syria, and you've got you know what looks like flying drone shots. There are some maps. There's some diagrams that were produced. A pretty you know, basic infographic is mixed in there. You've got lots of photos, and I wonder as you're thinking about a story like that, which is big and complicated in of itself, and then you're thinking about what data, what visual information am I going to provide to help support the story we're telling? How do you figure that out? How do you figure out here are the holes we need to find some data to fill.
Ryan McNeill
So, talking about visuals, I think that you know generally one of the things that you want to do is have graphics that are one. one easy to interpret. You know, I don't remember which book I read, but I remember one time this admonition has stayed in my head that the easiest thing for a reader to do is to stop reading, right? And if you make them have to work really hard to figure out a graphic. I mean, you know, remember we're speaking to a general audience, and in Reuters' case, people all over the world, some of whom English may not be their first language or whatever. So, you know, that those graphics and visuals need to stand on their own to a certain extent, the the chatter that goes with it, you know, the the text language, but it also, you know, it needs to be quickly digestible. And for that, we have a whole separate team of graphical journalists who specialize in this kind of thing. Look, if you want me to make a graphic that's publishable, we're in trouble. It's going to be other. You know, I can I do things for like you know investigating the data, but we have people who are really amazingly skilled at you know turning data that I have into a story. And and I try when I work with them, you know, some people have in their mind, oh, it needs to be. I'm making this up. A bar chart of this and this and this. Whereas I, I try to approach it like we have experts who understand how people consume data visualizations. I want them to give me their insight and to give me their expertise because they know more than me. And so, you know, I'm just kind of listing off a few sort of stand, you know, things that that go through my head. But you know, they need to be accessible, and you don't want to make them work hard.
Rosemary Pennington
You're listening to Stats and Stories, and we're talking with Reuters journalist Ryan McNeill, winner of the 2026 ASA Award for Excellence in statistical reporting.
John Bailer
As you're as you're talking about this, I I'm I'm thinking about some of the the stories that I've read that you've worked on. Part of this the Starving World series, and these are just these are just amazing collections of of visualization of information, but story, but imagery and photography that sort of I can just see this; it's all woven together beautifully. So kudos for for that that that result. I'm I'm curious if you could maybe step through a little bit of a process, the process that that may have been part of. You decide to do this story on how many dead are there in famine stricken Sudan. So that was you know that title, that one piece, how Reuters counted the number of dead in famine-stricken Sudan. So I, I'm. How did you go from some question that led to then data that led to then analysis that led to then the final story?
Ryan McNeill
So a little bit of background behind that particular story that you're talking about. You know, the Sudanese civil war broke out in early 2023. I think it was roughly April 15th, to be exact, or about that time. And you know, this was largely a place that we could not visit because of the security situation, however, there was an opportunity at some point later on in the war, and I'm now on the spot for the timing. I think it was, you know, it was some point maybe in like early 2024. I feel bad not remembering this, but but the war had been going on, and we had my colleague Maggie Michelle had an opportunity to travel into parts of Sudan, including Khartoum and some other areas, and she observed signs of developing hunger crisis. And you know, let's be honest, the. Entire international community was completely paralyzed in Sudan, you know, and in particular when it comes to, you know, we've we've created this this sort of data driven system for detecting famines, but that system relies on the ability to collect data. So you know, on the one hand, we you know, as as people who work with data, yes, data driven, that's that's a good thing. But in Sudan, it's just the system completely broke down. The government, of course, was was difficult in the process because you know nobody wants to have a famine on their watch. That's a failure, right? And you know, a failure of governance, a failure of of institutions, and you know, there's enough blame to go around all the parties in in this conflict. But you know, so we were trying to think about well, how how can we show quantitatively? Again, it's one thing to see, you know, when you're traveling on the ground to see, you know, bits and pieces evidence, you know, but but what could we do quantitatively and on a bit of a larger scale? And I was reading the the IPC manual, the technical manual, and this is why my admonition to young reporters is always read the technical documentation, because that will tell you how the system is supposed to work, right? And I remember seeing in there they had a section on what to do when when data when humanitarians can't work and collect data in these crises areas? And one of them was when you can count graves. And I remember thinking, well, we could do this from with satellites, I think. And so we set off to, you know, try to look at a number of different communities blending, and this is where it's really important. You know, data only goes so far, right? And and it and it has to connect with that, with, you know, the human element and what's happening on the ground, and so, you know, working with Maggie, who is unlike any reporter I've ever worked with. I mean, the RSF had imposed a blackout, a telecommunications blackout in Darfur, which meant getting a hold of people, even by phone, was difficult. And I like to kind of joke that with Maggie, you know, I could see something in a satellite image. You go, "This looks weird. I wonder what's happening here." And next thing I know, she's got an imam on the phone from this remote in this remote Darfur community, giving us an explanation. And so, you know, I say that half a jokingly, but it's generally true. And and so through that combination of what we were, what Maggie was hearing from people she was talking to, we we tried to choose some communities. Then the issue became we didn't have we didn't have enough satellite imagery at a high enough resolution across all these communities to count the individual graves. So, for that first story, we ended up measuring the area of expansion at these graveyards. It comes with flaws, of course, but you know this is sort of where you know academic researchers are really important. And I spent a lot of time talking to people like Jim Cochran and other helpful people, Maysoon Dahab at Lenin School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and and she also happens to be Sudanese and and understands the conflict.
Ryan McNeill
It does public health research, and and so like you know you're talking to experts like Jim, and and one of the biggest issues that I couldn't get over was like the imperfection of the data, right? You know, for example, if you're measuring the area of expansion, graves could be infilled, right? Like, you know, there there all kinds of things that could sort of mitigate our findings a little bit, but you know, they helped me feel comfortable with this idea of okay, we know nothing about what's happening in these areas, and what you have is in an emergency is is quantitative evidence that's of value to the public, and and hearing that from people like you know who have genuine expertise and you know, our learned individuals in in this field tell you, you know, basically don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, right? And so we published that first story, and we showed that graves were graveyards were expanding. A number of communities, and the IPC ended up citing us, citing our work as supporting evidence when they did acknowledge that famine had taken hold in Zam Zam Camp. And but then one of the other things, then we wanted to come back and we wanted to specifically focus on Zam Zam, and for that we were able to get because Zam Zam was this large IDP camp. It was one of Sudan's oldest and largest. Hundreds of 1000s of people lived there. You know they were being besieged by the RSF, and you know that there was an awful lot of very high resolution imagery that enabled us to do that. And so we set out to count the individual mounds in the graveyards, and and again, you know, we work with local officials, whether it's you know humanitarians or you know community leaders, imams, you know, whoever help us find the graveyards, help us, you know, you know, are there places we we ended up finding you know there there are places that are like sort of outside the camp in the middle of the kind of desert that we were able to find and include.
Rosemary Pennington
It's interesting sort of hearing you talk about how you've been using this sort of satellite and remote sensing data, and we talked a bit about that before the episode started. And I'm wondering sort of given how you've seen this profession evolve, kind of what you feel like is the next kind of space data journalism is going to go in, or well, what's the next big innovation that you think is going to come along that's going to again transform what it is reporters like you are doing?
Ryan McNeill
So you know, I've basically been charged on my team specifically with with you know I have this kind of geospatial investigations remit that's that I've been given, and and when I look at it from from that sort of biased standpoint of of satellite data, I mean there are so many sensors coming online, And also the ability to process that data, right? To look through, you know, what you know, various AI methods, if you will, machine learning methods to to to sort through that. But I think it's you know, it's the there's just a you know we're getting new sensors at higher resolutions. SAR synthetic aperture radar data is really fascinating, and I think that we're on the you know we're just kind of at the like the starting line of what SAR, both from government satellites and commercial providers, can do for journalism, particularly when covering conflict. For example, the radar can quote unquote see through clouds. If you think about where a lot of conflict occurs in the world, you know, in places like Congo, where or or you know West Africa, for example, where there's constant cloud cover, Iran is another example of that. Through the beginning of the war, there was a terrible amount of cloud cover over Tehran and and other places. I think maybe more specifically, more accurately, I think leading up to the word during protests, and there was cloud cover. You know, radar can kind of mitigate that, and there's different kinds of radar sensors that are coming online. RF, you know, that monitor can monitor monitor, you know, communication signals. You know, you can you can imagine a situation, right? If iwe go back to El Geneva, in in Darfur, you know, when it broke out, when when the Civil War broke out, there was, you know, basically, RSF forces were kind of marauding through town, you know, burning villages and killing people. And you know, if you had access to to like you know RF data and you could begin to to use those those devices to fix, you're not going to know what they're saying, right? It's just the fact that you can trace those those devices from one place to another, right? And you can begin to piece together who's been where and when. Also, along that same front, you have satellite imagery where you have not just one shot a day, but like eight shots a day. You know, you see people like Black Sky and Planet that have what do they call it? Rapid Revisit. I mean, imagine if you had a situation like Elginina and you had pictures throughout the day instead of one picture each day, right? You could begin to trace what was done and and when with more specificity. So, in many ways, I think it's it's like drinking from a fire hose, and and and it goes. Beyond geospatial work, you know, into other kinds of open source data, it's just very much drinking like a from a fire hose, and and you know, keeping up with it is is a chore.
John Bailer
So, so what advice do you have for someone who might want to work as a data journalist, how would they? How do you prepare for doing this as a career?
Ryan McNeill
Well, I think most universities offer a class, or at least most you know bigger journalism programs have a class. Take it. If you miss that opportunity, or you're later in your career, you know there's an awful lot of professional. You know, I mentioned the NICAR conference. There's other conferences, you know, that are hands-on, offer instruction. So, those would be, you know, as far as how you get training. That that would be my advice. The other thing that I always, when I when I used to teach at CUNY, New York, I would always rant to my students read the academic literature. There's a lot. I mean, some of my best stories have come from ideas, and and I think in academic literature, and you know, there's that's also where you see people who are using new methods and might find a data source you didn't know about. So, you know, at Reuters, when when we go to start on a you know a larger investigation, like there are two things you do: you read all what's been written about it before, but also read the academic literature, and that's also how you find experts. You know, you know, researchers who've been looking into you know X, Y, Z topic. That's how you're going to find people who are knowledgeable. So I think that's that would be sort of my main pieces of advice.
Rosemary Pennington
Well, that's all the time we have for this episode of Stats and Stories. Congratulations again on the award, Ryan, and it's been a pleasure having you back.
John Bailer
Yeah, thanks, Ryan. Thanks for having me.
Rosemary Pennington
Stats and Stories is a partnership between the American Statistical Association and Miami University's Departments of Statistics and Media, Journalism, and Film. You can follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or other places where you find podcasts. If you'd like to share your thoughts on the program, send your email to statstories@amstat.org, or check us out@statsandstories.net. And be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories, where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.
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