The Power of Data (plus a little history).

Data is really important to good investigative journalism. I’ve included some history here too because I believe understanding the past helps us understand the present, and is a good foundation for new journalists.

A lot of investigative journalism seems to involve handling data well. It is a great skill to be able to gather and then analyse a big heap of information which is what survey’s and records are; resembling more ‘the Matrix’ at first than the foundations of an important news story.  When the British M.P’s expense scandal was revealed, this was because some trooper had trawled through a very long list of where public money was going. He found that some M.P’s were taking a lot of money to spend on luxuries.

The weight that data and surveys can have is clear when reading history. When I was studying history we’d look at things like surveys of workers from the 1700’s through the industrial revolution. Historians like E.P Thompson and the Hammonds would use data records to argue living conditions decreased massively, as holidays decreased and working hours increased. But then other historians like Nardinelli would use different data, i.e. economic data from new industrial workers, to show the increase in pay and labour.

Records can be used to make different arguments seem true. Nardinelli did not look at data from non-industrial workers, who still struggled, or include actual job satisfaction. One historian used the data on declining holy days of workers in the Industrial Revolution to argue a decrease in religion because of capitalism.

Debates on things like work and pay and job satisfaction still continue today. Following the recent divide of the Church of England over the St Paul’s Occupy London protestors, it seems the capitalism vs. religion debate could re-emerge again.

Following more tips from my online journalism class, I have explored a few more great sites for citizen journalists on the subject of data analysis.

Knowing where to find data is important. Unless you are personally conducting a survey yourself, you will need to use other sources gathered from others who may work in government or the public sector for example and have better means to collect data.

http://data.gov.uk/ harbours a collection of good surveys, which may hide important news stories. These are revealed by the British government.

Datablog is a collection of surveys which are contributed from individuals. These could be from doctors or property managers, or anyone who understands the public’s need for knowledge.

‘Scraping’ is the method of getting data out of web pages and onto your own spreadsheets so you can edit it to create graphs etc. Some websites offer services which do this. Scraperwiki is one of them. Junar is a good site which can collect, organise and share data.