Sandia Gambati He was most recently a Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Fellow at Correctiv. He now works for ProPublica.during an interview classesdeperiodismo.comSandhya shares tips for getting started with data journalism.
The journalist worked on a reporting team that published an investigation into the German nursing home system that won the Deutsche Journalist Innovation Award.
He also oversaw a series of reports on racial profiling in Germany and wrote an e-book on the boarding process.
«We are delighted to have recruited such exceptional journalists to our news team,» said ProPublica Illinois Editor-in-Chief Louise Kiernan after announcing their hire.
In a conversation with Classesdeperiodismo.com, Sandhya has some key messages for data journalists:
«The hardest part of using data for projects is actually getting information through public records requests,» he said. Often, requests for information can take months or even years. You can then «have fun» exploring the data and mining interesting chunks of information.
His favorite tools are the R and SQL languages. Also, his first advice is to pick a tool and start using it. «For example, if you want to learn how to make a map, you can find data with coordinates and learn to use tools like Leaflet or QGIS,» he said. In his opinion, it is much easier to learn a new tool or programming language with a project, because you will have an end goal.
He also recommends finding a mentor.She is part of the IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) and follows this National Institute for Computer-Aided Reporting (Nica). “By attending trainings and meetings, I learned best practices for using data and seeing how other journalists analyze it,” he said.
Also, if you are just starting out, you should understand that «data analysis provides a new angle to explore the story». «It’s important to keep checks on government officials and ongoing processes,» he concluded.
Will you follow his advice?
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Journalist graduated from the Catholic University of Peru (PUCP). Master in Digital Journalism, University of Alcalá, Spain. ISIL Digital Journalism Professor/Community Manager. @zophiap on Twitter
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