10 - Visualization as a reporting tool

Monday, March 23

Deadlines

Tuesday, March 24: R exam.
Friday, March 27: Second self-assessment. This is due Friday so that you spend time on your story memo over the weekend!
Sunday, April 5: Tentative Optional first draft or outline of story memo. We’ll discuss some options because of the semester interruption during class on Thursday.

Thursday, March 25

Guest speaker: Brandon Quester, executive editor of the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, who will talk about how he plans to revive the center, what stories he hopes to focus on, and freelance opportunities for our students.

Review of R exam I’ll provide sample answers again, and we can talk about the results. I may not have the test graded by the time we start. (Not all of the tests are in yet - we’ll do this on Tuesday)

Visualization as a reporting tool

This will be a little different by section, since the MAIJ students have already done some work on visualization in their interdisciplinary courses. We’ll see how the time goes – we may not have time for much. Consider asking for more viz for the “students’ choice” week “if you’re interested.

Visualization as a reporting tool, presentation from Sarah (It’s about 2 years old, so some of the tools have changed.)
An example of one visualization from start to finish using R and the library plotly for interactivity. (R Markdown file is here – you can press the “raw” button then copy and paste it or save it into your own doc.)
Maybe: Walkthrough of an example of an R Markdown document that could have been used to find places and events as well as trends.

Materials for after class

A handout on the principles of data visualization as a reporting tool.
Module 1, Introduction to Visualization Principles, and Module 2, Visualization to find Stories in Data, from Alberto Cairo’s free online course at JournalismCourses.org, from the University of Texas. (The class uses a different product, but it is the one that eventually became Flourish.
If you want to choose one of Cairo’s books to read, he suggests “The Functional Art”, his first book, for reporters. It’s the one that focuses as much on discovery and exploration as it does on communication.
Alberto Cairos’ 11-piece video tutorial on Flourish are on YouTube)