Mapping & Data For Journalists

Are you fascinated by amazing data and mapping projects you see from the New York Times and WNYC? In this session, you'll learn what kinds of data are available to journalists – and then get some intensive hands-on practice creating mapping projects that can be replicated at your organization. This session will include a primer on free mapping tools and platforms that enable content producers to create incredibly detailed, interactive maps.

This session is being taught by NYC-based John Keefe, an award-winning journalist and the Senior Editor for Data News & Journalism Technology at WNYC, New York Public Radio. Keefe infuses WNYC's journalism with data reporting and interactive news applications, including census analysis, map mashups, news charts and SMS-based crowdsourcing projects. John is going to show you how he built some of his recent projects, which include:

Hacking the Census - How we made a Fusion Tables census map

Story: Can Brooklyn’s historical black Congressional district survive?
Map itself
The Data: census.ire.org
The Shapes: Census download page
Shapefiles to Fusion: shpescape.com
Tract shapes Fusion Table
Population change table
Population density table
Congressional districts shape table

Election Data Without a Database:

Making AP Data Easy with Fusion Tables

Ins and Outs of APIs:

WNYC's It's A Free Country site
Story with donut dataviz
Highcharts.com
BotOrNot.net
Topsy.com and the Topsy API
My last 100 tweeted links

PLEASE NOTE: This class is intended for people who are comfortable using spreadsheets and are eager to learn more about mapping. This is an ADVANCED BEGINNER class. If you're already well versed in Fusion Tables, this is not the class for you.