1. Data and visualisation
tools for journalists
@Coneee
Interactive News Editor, Telegraph

2. Problems, not solutions
-Andrew Leimdorfer, BBC News Specials team
YES: "Can we show people where the best
schools are?"
NO: "I need a map for my story about schools"

3. What you need
Stories
Time
Developers (front and back-end)
Designers
Servers and ADMIN RIGHTS!

4. Key design principles
Infographics vs visualisation
Dual navigation (maps and tables)
User testing (people asked non-leading Qs)
Font hierarchy
Annotation layer

5. Sources for data (most are free)
ONS
Parliament
Sources
FOI/transparency releases
Scraping

7. Getting the data
Right click -> Save as
Safari multiple download
OutWit hub
PHP scrapers (ScraperWiki)
MySQL to merge multiple spreadsheets

8. Getting the data right
Excel stat pack (Analysis ToolPak)
Google Refine
MySQL
TextWrangler
Cartographica/Colorbrewer

9. Excel stat pack
Averages (Mean/Median)
Counts
Quartiles
Max/Min
Standard deviation

10. Most used functions
Sort/Filter
Pivot tables/Aggregation
Text to columns
Regex search
SQL COUNT()

11. Presenting the data
Google chart tools/Fusion Tables
Illustrator
Raphael.js
HighCharts.js/Datatables.js
Gephi

12. Tools for journalists
Hotspot tool
Charts generator
Tables generator
Interactive maps generator
Locator maps generator

13. Tools for journalists cont.
Before/after image generator
Bulk FOI requests tool
Document annotation tool
Twitter embed tool

14. One stop shop
coolstuff.telegraph.co.uk

15. One stop shop cont.
Tour de France graphic has "annotation layer"

16. One stop shop cont.
Tour de France graphic has "annotation layer"... which journalists can easily access

17. Tools: Graphs

18. Tools: Graphs
-Non-coders can create graphics easily
-250/month created without the use of my team

19. Tools: Tables

20. Tools: Tables
-300 created last month by non-coders

21. Tools: Location maps

22. Tools: Hotspot

23. Tools: Interactive maps

24. Tools: Documents

25. Tools: Tweets
-1,000/month. Permanent record as stores
tweet text in HTML (not Twitter API)

26. Tools: Before/after

27. More advanced "bespoke" work
Requires from several hours to several weeks
Up to 10 people on a project
Multiple disciplines
Expensive data
Specialist knowledge

28. Example one: School league tables

29. Example one: School league tables

30. Example one: School league tables

31. Example one: School league tables
Data downloaded, cleaned with Google Refine
MySQL SET used to merge spreadsheets
Geocoded using Google Maps API
Uploaded to Google Fusion tables
Visualised/built using Raphael, Javascript

32. Example two: Assad emails

33. Example two: Assad emails

34. Example two: Assad emails
Thousands of emails downloaded and read
Added to Gephi
Exported to PDF
Designed in Illustrator
Made interactive in our Hotspot tool

35. Example three: Repossessions

36. Example three: Repossessions

37. Example three: Repossessions
Asked PR for the spreadsheet
Had spreadsheet, but also had Fusion Table
gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
Redesigned font hierarchy, ColorBrewer,
annotation layer

38. Thanks for listening
@Coneee
Interactive News Editor, Telegraph.co.uk