This is the site for the Cronkite School of Journalism’s data reporting class. It’s required of every graduate student in the news reporting track and is an elective for upper class undergraduates.

It’s gone by a variety of names: Precision Journalism, Telling Stories with Data, Data Journalism, Computer-Assisted Reporting and more. We’re using the umbrella concept of “empirical journalism”.

About me

I began teaching at the Cronkite School in 2018 as the Knight Chair in Journalism. I’m one of several Knight Foundation-funded data journalism professors around the United States. This is my second tour as a Knight chair – the first was at Duke University, as the Knight Professor of the Practice in Computational Journalism (a mouthful) from 2009 to 2012.

I’ve been a reporter and editor for most of my career, starting out as a beat reporting in Florida. I began specializing in data reporting when I found that officials didn’t examine their own data, and often didn’t know what was available to them. Florida’s public records laws, much like Arizona’s, make that more possible than in other places.

I then worked as a database editor for The Washington Post. There, I received most major national investigative journalism awards. They include the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting, the Robert F. Kennedy award for public service, the Investigative Reporters and Editors medal, and the Goldsmith Award in investigative reporting. I also contributed to a Pulitzer Prize in Public Service and the Selden Ring award.

Before I joined Cronkite I led the data reporting team at The New York Times that focused on investigative and enterprise stories. My team’s members were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize twice in my five years there, and contributed to another Pulitzer.

I was an elected board member for the 5,000-member Investigative Reporters and Editors for eight years, two of them as president. I’ve also served as a board member or advisor to the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Fund for Investigative Journalism.