Visualization: and the winner is....

 Data is hot, but without visualization data are not interesting in journalism. The development of new visualization tools goes fast. For years I am using Tableau public for visualizing data. But how about new tools like, PowerBI and Qlik .

In the end they all do the same thing visualizing data in nice graph and maps on dashboards, that can be publicized as a web page. There are differences however, if you don't have the time to try them all and need a comparison between the three software packages, I found the following helpful: Difference Between Power BI vs Tableau vs Qlik. And here is a second one taking R and Shiny into account: https://www.r-bloggers.com/2020/11/3-top-business-intelligence-tools-compared-tableau-powerbi-and-sisense/ 

DATAJOURNALISTIEK IN AFRIKA

     Voor RTV Noord maakte ik ter voorbereiding voor een inleiding over datajournalistiek, de volgende screencast over afrikaanse thema's.

https://youtu.be/djkcfkYgwEc

KAPWING for online video editing and slide shows

 Just found a nice tool for editing video online and making various slideshow: KAPWING  at https://www.kapwing.com/

It is not rocket science but this video is a fast track how-to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhyusGNX1Ig

Here is an example: a short slideshow with pictures of last years ABSA RHODES data journalism training

HOW TO LIE WITH DATA

From 'he said she said journalism to fact based reporting', that is the mission statement of data journalism. In the digital era, more and more data are produced, providing a basis for policies from the government to corporations and NGOs. By analyzing and visualizing data, journalism would be better in checking policies.Of course journalists need some skills that were formerly not a part of their education. Digitization has changed this, writing and typing, not enough; at least journalists need multimedia skills. And even better a journalist must be able to handle data/figures, analyze and visualize them.

Handling data used to be the exclusive territory of scientist, who know of the ins and outs of statistics and graphs. A lot of things can go wrong in reporting about he facts. Darrell Huff already wrote in the fifties about "How to lie with statistics". His arguments are still valid, but need to be updated. In newspaper and magazine articles, in reports, claims are made that cannot be based on the presented facts. These claims are distorted or even misleading. How to discover this?

Two new books are very helpful.

- Alberto Cairo, professor in visual journalism at the University of Miami, published "How charts lie. Getting smarter about visual information". As a visual designer Cairo focuses on charts, maps and graphs, and give interesting examples how a simple bar graph can be misleading: by shortening the Y axes, difference between let's say the growth rate of the economies of two countries can be enlarged. Or that a 3-D pie graph could be misleading through the perspective. His blog is very helpful to dig deeper in disclosing false visual claims: http://www.thefunctionalart.com/ 

- Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West, both professor at the University of Washington at Seattle, published Calling Bullshit: The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven World. Their angle is wider, ranging from visualization to statistics and credibility of journals. "Bullshit is language, statistical figures, data graphics, and other forms of presentation intended to persuade by impressing and overwhelming a reader or listener, with a blatant disregard for truth and logical coherence". The book is a product of their lectures. And the good thing is that these lectures, together with the reading list and examples ar online. Their website, https://www.callingbullshit.org/, a goldmine for unveiling distorted information and news.

WD My Book Live - error:31520

I use a WD My Book Live(MBL) as a NAS more specific as music server. It streams my music to my phone over my LAN and when I am abroad I can listen to the music over the internet using the My Cloud app.

Generally the control light on the MBL is blue, power save mode. A few weeks ago it turned green, meaning a connection; it turned out I could not connect over the internet, but on the LAN it was still working.
Logging into the setup: http://mybooklive/UI/login, settings, remote access I read: cannot establish remote access (error 31520).
 Interesting message....and of course the web has the answer: https://community.wd.com/t/cannot-establish-remote-connection-error-31520/248385/38
To connect from outside the connection is a VPN using a certificate. WD has replaced that certificate, without notification! Solution: o replace the old certificate with the new one.

This will do the trick:

• enable SSH: http://mybooklive/UI/ssh
• ssh user@mybooklive
• go to /usr/local/orion/openvpnclient
• rename ca.crt to ca.crt.old
• copy the attached ca.crt.txt and rename to ca.crt
• chmod 774 ca.crt
• Set your Remote Access as Automatic on your MyBookLive daskboard and Reboot the My Book Live from the dashboard.
• You can verify proper operation of the cert by checking the log file using this command cat /var/log/openvpn.out

Working! Problem solved.

POVERTY DATA IN R

Preparing for absa/rhodes #datajournalism training. Making an assignment about rising poverty in Africa as a consequence of the corona pandemic.Apart from estimates the basic facts can be found PovcalNet:"an interactive computational tool that allows you to replicate the calculations made by the World Bank's researchers in estimating the extent of absolute poverty in the world". More: http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/home.aspx
You can create your own data tables, download the data in xls format and visualize for example with Tableau or Flourish. More advanced is the use of the R package: povcalnetR and do you own calculations and visualizations in R statistics. Here is example:

SUBSTACK: A NEW MODEL FOR THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM

That  future does not look very bright, the corona virus pandemic has wounded the media: layoffs, shrinking advertisement and more. Is there a way out for the journalists who want to carry on with the work they are passionate about?
Here are some ideas; first the older ones.

- Start a blog on  topics of your interest and try to make money with advertising; Google Analytics and Google AdSense are helpful for monetizing; and Twitter and or Facebook could assist in attracting readers. However, there are at least 13 reason why blog ads suck for monetizing your site.

- write a e-book and publish it online for a reasonable price: Leanpub is one of the promising possibilities. Writing a book is a lot of work, and selling it as an e-book, even at a low price, is no guarantee for a good income for all that hard work.

- Here is the latest! Start a subscribed newsletter using Substack. “Substack represents a radically different alternative, in which the “media company” is a service and the journalists are in charge “, writes Ben Smith in the NYTimes . The generated income of subscribed e-mail letter is more interesting than Click Through Rate(CTR) for ads on a blog.  Substack charges a transaction fee, which could get high if you are successful. Ghost is an alternative and works with hosting.