Simon Rogers is an award-winning data journalist, writer and speaker. Author of ‘Facts are Sacred‘, published by Faber & Faber in the UK, China and South Korea. He has also written a range of infographics for children books from Candlewick. Data editor on the News Lab team at Google, based in San Francisco, he is director of the Data Journalism Awards and teaches Data Journalism at Medill-Northwestern University in San Francisco and has taught at U Cal Berkeley Journalism school.
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John Bailer: Data journalism is defined as the process by which we get a strong story from numbers. Simon Rogers is a leading voice in the world of data journalism, and he joins us today on Stats and Short Stories. I’m John Bailer, Chair of Miami University’s Department of Statistics and I’m joined today by Richard Campbell and by Rosemary Pennington, both of the Department of Media, Journalism and Film, along with our very special guest Simon Rogers. Simon, welcome.
Simon Rogers: Hi there.
Bailer: It’s so good to have you join us. One thing that I’m worried about, or curious about is what are the challenges now faced by data journalism? You’ve written about the idea of data journalism is just like punk rock, you know, everyone can do it, but there’s certainly going to be some challenges that they face. Could you talk a little bit about the challenges that you perceive?
Rogers: So, I mean, obviously, anything worth doing in life is hard at some point, and data journalism can be difficult. And the fact that, public data is still produced on PDFs which is where data goes to die. Honestly, and it’s stunning to me that that sort happens in this day and age.
Bailer: Amen.
Rogers: And also, the lack of kind of- even at a national level now, we can see in the U.S. there’s a real issue around datasets not being updated and data vanishing, which is astonishing to see. I think that’s a real fear and a difficulty for anybody. So, I work with Pro Publica in Argentina sometimes and they have to kind of almost treat themselves as collators of data because they worry about when stuff is published and then it vanished; I didn’t imagine that would be the case in the U.S., but that’s where we are. And I think there’s that, there’s the accessibility of data, and then there’s the amount of just hard bloody work that goes into turning that data into something you can work with. All the cleaning, the mashing up, and making sure there’s not mistakes in the datasets. All that stuff is still tricky, and there are tools to help with that. There are things like open refine, which is a great tool, and I know here at Google we’re working on a few tools to help with that but it’s still not easy. And also, I think often with data journalists, when they’re in the newsroom, there is a kind of isolation sometimes because you’re the only person doing the work you’re doing. Like if you were – so my friends Scott Klein so if you were the home editor, or the metro editor and you left, the team would know how to replace you. There’s a whole process, and they would understand how to do that. If you’re the data editor and you leave nobody knows how to replace you, and that’s a tricky thing. And I think that speaks to a kind of isolationism that can be created if you’re a data journalist. There are solutions, I don’t mean to sound so miserable about all this. Those challenges lead to incredible collaborative word, things like data journalism have a - or some of the projects that pro public has, are kind of collaborative reporting projects are amazing things to see, and there are a ton of resources out there by data journalists, but I do see those as things that were issues a few years ago, and they’re still issues now I think.
Richard Campbell: Maybe you could speak too to one of the things we worry about, especially here in a small town in the Midwest, where there are a lot of media deserts now, where we’ve lost so many reporters over the last ten years- and in very small communities- they no longer have local news or they look at regional news. So you’re not just talking about a metro editor leaving, you’re talking about how do we- and maybe you can speak to a project Google has- how do we help support small town newspapers? Or news operations or regional papers that are suffering? Because we’ve got a – you know, newspapers have a business model that’s all screwed up and is not working, and we’re in this transition to some kind of new digital model but it’s going to take some time. In the meantime, I think there are a lot of stories that aren’t being told, especially at the regional and local level, you know? Because you’ve got a President who takes up a lot of energy just through tweeting. That takes a lot of attention from the national level. So…
Rogers: That’s the thing- I mean, I’m so old, but when I was at journalism school, if you went into a courtroom there would always be a reporter. If you went to a town council meeting, there would always be a reporter. They would complain about it, and moan about it, right? And that’s – the loss of that, is a real challenge, and so even if there is more data than before, if you haven’t got the bodies to work with it on a local level who really understand it as well, that is definitely a challenge. And although there are definitely some initiatives out there which are really interesting, I think there’s a realization on local – you know what’s left of local journalism and how important data can be used to tell very local stories, which can bring people in right? You know that something is happening where you live that can be a really powerful story telling tool. I know that there are some kinds of initiatives now to do things with town hall meetings even. And you can imagine how things like machine learning can be really helpful there, you know? Imagine you have a machine learner that can analyze audio and video files for you and tell you what’s covered as those story generating ideas or even data location ideas. That’s a good thing. But it’s obviously, you know, in an environment where it can be tricky, well, at the moment for sure.
Bailer: Very good. Well I’m afraid that’s all the time we have for this episode of Stats and Short Stories. Simon thank you so much for being here.
Rogers: Thanks for having me.
Bailer: You’re welcome. Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University’s Departments of Statistics and Media, Journalism and Film, and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on twitter, Apple podcasts, or other places where you can find podcasts. If you’d like to share your thoughts on our program send your emails to statsandstories@miamioh.edu, or check us out at 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.