11 February 2015

All assignments are due by 3 PM the Tuesday before class.

I’m always accessible on Tuesdays until 3PM, so don’t hestitate to ask for help.

Keep working on your community profile. Incorporate the feedback you got in class today and revise it.

Clean More Data with OpenRefine. Campaign Finance filings will win any “dirty data” contest. For Homework, you’re going to pick a candidate who rean for office in New York City recently – your City Council person is fine. The mayor is fine. Download their filings from the NYC Campaign Finance Board Database and do some digging around. Or: toss me a different dirty data set that you’d like to take a stab at.

Good examples of the kinds of stories you can write with data like this: data, from Gothamist Shady Groups Spend “Unprecedented” Amount Of Cash In Mayoral Election and from The New York Times, Loophole in a Rule on Ad Spending, Group Financed by Business Leaders Has Put Nearly $7 Million Into Council Races. The Times also built a nice interactive guide to How Much the N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Have Raised and Spent but they stopped updating it before the campaign season was over.

Read “Click here” is an easy fallback, but it usually means that it isn’t obvious what a reader should do next. Look for an opportunity to make links and tabs more intuitive. Two good readings:

Install either TextWrangler or Notepad++ if you’re a Windows user.

Read about choropleth maps

Consider Reading a few more map writings, including When Maps Shouldn’t Be Maps

Heatmaps





CUNY Graduate School of Journalism

© Spring 2015 Amanda Hickman