Course resources
You are not required to buy any texts for this class. What follows is a list of resources that I will update throughout the semester that may be useful.
Optional materials
Books:
Free, online books
- European Journalism Centre and Google News Initiative: Data Journalism Handbook
- Jonathan Stray: Interactive Data Journalism
- Sarah Cohen: Numbers in the Newsroom: Using Math and Statistics in News (2014)
- Philip Meyer: The New Precision Journalism (1991)
Print books
Meredith Broussard: Artificial Unintelligence (2018)
A useful overview text of data journalism with an emphasis on computers not being as smart as they seem. The book showcases how data is only as good as the humans that go into its collection and how artificial intelligence can be hugely biased.
James T. Hamilton: Democracy’s Detectives (2016)
An economic perspective on the costs and societal benefits of investigative journalism, with a look at computational journalism. Written by the professor who leads Stanford’s journalism department.
Alberto Cairo: The Truthful Art: Data, Charts, and Maps for Communication (2016)
An excellent primer on visual design thinking and visualizations in service of journalism.
Edward Tufte: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983)
A non-journalistic perspective on design principles for displaying data.
Jonathan Stray: The Curious Journalist's Guide to Data (2016)
A completely free, in-depth dive into the data part of data journalism, focusing on statistics and data representation.
Articles
- Computational Journalism, by Sarah Cohen, James T. Hamilton, and Fred Turner (ACM 2011)
Videos:
- YourDataStories: What is Data-Driven Journalism? (2015)
Other online data journalism courses:
- Lena Groeger: Intro to Data Journalism
- Dan Nguyen: Public Affairs Data Journalism
- Alberto Cairo: Data Visualization for Storytelling and Discovery
Datasets
- OpenDataPhilly: Data portal for Philadelphia used by the government and other agencies
- School District of Philadelphia - Open Data: Data from the School District of Philadelphia
- World Bank Open Data: Datasets on global development
