Windows10

I am not a fan of Windows, updated to Windows10 yesterday. It is not Linux, but Windows10 works smoothly and you can find your programs with the start button.

Are Coders Taking Over

(This article is an edited version of the speech given at the Josh Friedman price ceremony at GIPA, Tbilisi, Georgia, June 9 2015; published at Memeburn  http://memeburn.com/2015/06/has-coding-become-journalisms-most-important-skill/)

Journalism will never be as before. The rise of internet not only changed the business model for media but also the content. Data is the new content. Of course journalism is still about storytelling, but it is changing fast in another direction. Drones- drone journalism- are now almost an accepted tool for reporting. Computers could be instructed to write basic stories: robot journalism. Take for example a story from NY Times Upshot about the best and worst places to grow up in the US and notice how the text changes according to the data selected. 

The latest development is sensor journalism. Buy an Arduino board and a few sensors, write a program for the processor and you are in business. An interesting example is the air quality in San Diego, where students of the University measured the air pollution in different parts of the city. Access to water points in Tanzania or water pollution in streams and dams used as potable water in South Africa are other interesting try outs.  It is undeniable that the influence of technology on journalism especially IT and coding is growing. Where is data journalism going?

Wordt datajournalistiek een soort van ‘invuljournalistiek’?

Het lijkt tegenwoordig steeds makkelijker te worden om aan datajournalistiek. Je gooit wat cijfers in een webdienst als Datawrapper of LocalFocus en rolt vanzelf een mooie visualisatie uit. Betekent dit dat datajournalistiek een simpele invuloefening wordt voor elke journalist?
Alhoewel datajournalistiek al meer dan 50 jaar oud is begint zij nu pas aan een grote vlucht. Met regelmaat publiceren de media resultaten van analyse van cijfers, meestal voorzien van schitterende visualisaties. De lintjesregen, de beste gemeente van Nederland, sterftecijfers van ziekenhuizen, inbraken, verkeersongelukken, verkiezingsuitslagen en natuurlijk vluchtelingen/asielzoekers, alles wordt gekwantificeerd en de conclusies zijn nieuws.

Gepubliceerd op De Nieuwe Reporter

MAKING MAPS WITH R

Last week I was delivering a training to journalists of the 'Persgroep'. Topic: datajournalism2: more advanced techniques for data journalists. A short introduction to R was on the list. Using data about Dutch municipalities - gemeentedata- we did basic statistics in R. Faster and easier then in Excel.
You don't  have a clue about R? Take a training; for example this one: http://tryr.codeschool.com/. Install R studio on your machine. How? Read everything about installing R and R studio at http://www.r-bloggers.com/.
My students were enthusiastic while calculating percentages, mean, 2x2 tables etc. And the graphs...quick and easy.
So R is the replacement for Excel. But how about mapping? I played around with R and found some nice easter eggs. There are many examples about how to get your code ready to map your data. Try for example: https://rpubs.com/nickbearman/r-google-map-making and this one: http://prabhasp.com/wp/how-to-make-choropleths-in-r/

Here is some data used from an exercise with Refine; simply putting some markers on a Google map.
A bit more complicated are polygon maps. Here is one about high incomes in Dutch municipalities.

Could R become my Swiss army knife for data journalism?



 

Mapping Twitter Followers in R

R is an interesting project for data journalism.Why? Here is an answer.
Was playing around with in R with the Twitter API and package twitteR. Here is een example of mapping followers and following on Twitter.
The how-to is here: http://thinktostart.com/map-twitter-followers-with-r/

WD My Book Live

Is my media server hacked? the green LED on the front was constantly on or blinking, indicating that there is read/write activity. However the led continued blinking even when there was no connection of my machines. From outside perhaps? Hardly possible with a firewall.
Some research unveiled that there is a media crawler active on the media server, indexing and reformatting pictures. I wanted to turn the crawler of because the server got hot and was working continuously. Here is how to.

Snow's cholera map revisited

The cholera map of John Snow from 1854  solved the mystery of cholera by relating it to contaminated wells and pumps. It is also a classical example of GIS analysis. It has also become  a paradigm for data journalism.









Now Snow's data are re-analyzed and mapped using R and Open Street maps. Here are two interesting maps.