Hi, I'm Alvin. This is an evolving list of data and visual journalism resources. I'll continue to update these as needed. It was last updated May 8, 2024.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Intro to data and visual journalism, in 7 lessons | If you are a complete beginner, this is where to start |
| How to use pivot tables in journalism | This is an introductory video-driven lesson on pivot tables |
| Data exploration with Datawrapper | A presentation tutorial on how to use Datawrapper for data exploration |
| Basic data analysis in Google Sheets | A video tutorial on how to do basic data analysis |
| Basic Illustrator charts | A presentation on how to make charts in Illustrator |
| Making chart with Google Sheets and Figma | A tutorial on making a Google Chart, bringing it into Figma, customizing the chart, and exporting it as an image or a responsive HTML file. |
| Basic Open Refine | A text tutorial on how to use Open Refine to clean data |
| Formatting in Google Sheets | A text tutorial on how to format your Google Sheet spreadsheet |
| Avoiding errors in data reporting | A presentation on avoiding data error when starting with data journalism. Here's a document with all the same material. |
| Data fact-checking | A very quick write-up on what I do to fact-check at the end of a story |
| Mapping with Flourish | Intro to mapping points and shapes with Flourish |
| Quick intro to Pandas and Jupyter Notebook | Get Pandas and Jupyter Notebook installed on your computer, and start digging into this powerful data analysis tool |
| Scraping with Google Sheets | Yes, you can scrape with Google Sheets. Ben Collins has a great tutorial here. |
| Mapping with QGIS | Browser-based mapping tools have lots of limitations. A program like QGIS can help (and will make you a mapping pro.) |
| R for journalists | R is a programming language for data analysis. Andrew Ba Tran has a great tutorial on learning R. |
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Data Is Plural | Data Is Plural is a great newsletter run by Jeremy Singer-Vine. He sends out interesting datasets every week. |
| Information is Beautiful | This is a curated list of interesting datasets. There isn't really a theme, but they have some interesting datasets that clearly point you to stories. |
| Immigration data | This is a great list of immigration-related datasets pulled together by Angilee Shah. |
| Education data | The Urban Institute gathered a bunch of federal data on education. It's a good way to get the lay of the land for core education datasets. |
| Kaggle data | Users can upload datasets to Kaggle. Sometimes they are straight from a source; other times the user has cleaned it up or manipulated it in some way. So make sure to read up on the data and go to the source, if possible. |
| Open Data Network - dataset search | Sometimes it's hard to know where to start looking for data. This can be a good place to search and start. |
| Google Dataset Search | Sometimes it's hard to know where to start looking for data. This is another a good place to search and start. |
| Bureau of Labor Statistics | The Labor Department tracks so many things - wages, unemployment, spending, cost, etc. It's basically anything job- or economy-related. |
| Bureau of Labor Statistics | The Labor Department tracks so many things - wages, unemployment, spending, cost, etc. It's basically anything job- or economy-related. |
| Census Reporter | Easy-to-access Census and ACS data. |
| Census data | Official website for Census data. It's a little more complex than Census Reporter, but you can download data going back a few years. |
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Datawrapper | Tool to make simple charts. Great when you just need to make a simple, clear chart or map. |
| Flourish | Tool to make complex charts. I like it for mapping. |
| QGIS | This is open source mapping software. It's like ArcGIS, but free. I have a tutorial of this above. |
| CometDocs | Turn PDFs of spreadsheets into Excel files. |
| Adobe PDF to Excel | Turn PDFs of spreadsheets into Excel files - the official Adobe tool. |
| Processing | A programming language for visual artists. |
| Aseprite | A program for making 8-bit sprites and pixel art. |
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Flowing Data | Nathan Yau curates interesting data viz and also has some great tutorials. |
| Visualising Data | Andy Kirk has a blog, podcast, and more on data viz. |
| The Pudding | Data and visual essays on a wide variety of topcis. (I work with them.) |
| What makes a visualization memorable? | A fascinating study on making memorial data viz. |
| 39 studies about human perception in 30 minutes | Kennedy Elliott has a great post on human perception and how it affects the way our audience reads charts. |
| Data Visualization, Fast and Slow | Elijah Meeks on making charts that are quickly understood - and ones that ask the reader to take time to read it. |
| Data Visualization keynote with Alberto Cairo | Alberto Cairo gives a great keynote speech on data viz. |
| PolicyViz podcast | Jon Schwabish has a great podcast with data viz practitioners. |
| Book: WSJ Guide to Information Graphics | I think this is the first book anyone should read on data viz. |
| Book: The Functional Art | Alberto Cairo goes a bit deeper on data viz with this book. |
| Book: Thinking Clearly With Data | If you aren't sure how data can clarify your thinking, this book is for you. |
| Book: Data + Journalism | The authors interview various data journalists and visual journalists, and shows how they do their work. |
| Book: Mining Social Media | Use your tech skills to mine social media for stories. |
| Book: Understanding Comics | Yes, this is about comics. But it's also about visual storytelling. It truly shaped the way I think about my work. |
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| A Big List of Data/Visual Journalists | I keep a list on Twitter/X. |
| News Nerdery | A Slack channel with thousands of journalists interested in data, design, product, and nerdy things. |
| NICAR | Investigative Reporters and Editors is nonprofit that runs NICAR, which is the OG data journalism group. Try to attend a NICAR conference at some point. |
| Open News jobs | Open News is a group that connects journalists, developers, designers, and editors to work on journalism problems. They have a good jobs board. |