When duty called, it was time to step up, even if the work wasn’t on my own desk.

I spent the majority of Friday working with the breaking news team at USA Today to get all the most up-to-date news to our readers on the shooting in Colorado.

It was every emotion in the book: fun, frustrating, stressful, exhilarating and everything in between.

The subject matter is an issue very close to me, as a Hokie, but nevertheless, I put those thoughts out of my mind and contributed to coverage that not once during the day had to issue a correction.

If you didn’t see the resulting story, it can be found here. Though I didn’t get a byline, the story that has been recommended thousands of times on Facebook has my name as a contributor at the bottom.

I learned a lot from the experience, but the main thing that I’ll take away is that I am a very good researcher on deadline. I attribute the research work I did at the New York Times last semester for the skills I’ve developed in that area.

Through tragedy, solace can sometimes be found through journalism. I think the whole team at USA Today did a wonderful job of reporting quickly and accurately and I’m proud to have been a small part of it.

That being said, I’m looking forward to getting back to my data and finishing my own story. It was nice to get out of my comfort zone for a day, but I’m very ready to get back to the data desk.

Jul 21, 2012 | Internship, Research
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When you work long and hard on something, it can be very difficult to postpone its publication.

When I began working on the banned books series (part one for which was published in the Missourian today) it was early February and we were addressing sunshine requests to all 566 school districts in Missouri.

None of us knew our roles. All we knew was that we’d be doing this project and we’d figure more out as time wore on.

In the midst of that month, I served on the staff of the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting conference in St. Louis. New worlds were suddenly opened to me.

Until that point, programming had just been a hobby. I never realized I could mix it with journalism until that conference.

When I got back, we decided on roles that we would play for the series. I suggested an interactive map and took the lead on its creation. Originally, I wanted to use Google Fusion Tables for its creation, but I found it wasn’t customizable enough for my taste. That’s when I found Leaflet.

Leaflet, “a modern, lightweight open-source JavaScript library” for interactive maps, allowed to me customize everything because I had to build it from scratch.

The process of learning Leaflet was one of trial and error. To be honest, that’s how I learn best. Give me a language and ask me to create something and I’ll go.

As the map progressed, I learned the ins and out of programs like QGIS and Tilemill, on top of Leaflet, and my interest in learning more was piquing.

When offered a create-your-own assistantship at the Missourian for the Fall, I would have loved to take it, but I had already taken an equally exciting position at DocumentCloud. However, I wasn’t ready to give up on the idea.

I pitched the idea of doing an assistantship for credit and the editors bit. I decided then and there that the Columbia Missourian would get a (long-overdue) News Applications desk and I would be the editor.

I talked to some folks out there in the news apps world about how to start a desk (including Brian Boyer, who started the news apps desk at NPR this summer) and what I could do to hit the ground running.

I got a lot of great feedback and as a result, I have my own subdomain, linux machine in the newsroom and an Amazon S3 account to host the apps. Coming in August will be a blog for the desk that will mostly be tended to by myself but will also feature fledgling reporters I work with and their experiences diving into news apps.

All that being said, today was the long-awaited day when the first part of the banned books series was published. Indirectly, this meant the official beginning of the News Apps desk at the Missourian. At 6 a.m. CST, the apps, and accompanying stories, went live on the website and were put up for scrutiny.

The first app was a map of all the districts where books had been challenged since the beginning of 2008. It was created mainly with Leaflet, with assists from Wax and TileMill.

The second app was a surprise to Missourian editors as I had decided to do it on a whim a few weeks ago. The app was a searchable, sortable database of responses to our sunshine requests. I thought it would be a good idea to keep these people accountable for fulfilling our requests. The app was created using the LA Times’ Table-Stacker.

Since my apps went public, they have been seen by more than 250 people and counting. I’ve gotten very positive feedback about those apps, which only makes me want to get to producing more.

If you’re interested in seeing the first part of the series, you can find it here. The second part will be out tomorrow both in Vox Magazine and online. You can also see a link to our coverage on the St. Louis Public Radio website.

Despite the fact that it contains no news apps, you should catch the second part of the series tomorrow as it contains some absolutely fascinating in-depth pieces on book banning in Missouri and the country.

Jul 18, 2012 | Coding, News Apps
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Next up on the Internview docket is Emily Garnett. A fellow Pennsylvania native, Emily and I were in quite a few classes together, including a Field Reporting class as well as an Investigative Reporting class.

Emily did some fabulous work at the Columbia Missourian last fall, with an emphasis on agriculture reporting. Enjoy:

SR: Where are you working?

EG: DTN/The Progressive Farmer, based in Omaha, Neb.  The Progressive Farmer is a monthly print magazine based down in Alabama, but it’s owned by Telvent DTN, a markets-weather-and-ag service that publishes an online agricultural site that produces a lot of ag-based data and news for hundreds of thousands of farmers and ranchers.  I mostly do daily online news for DTN, but I write for the magazine, too.

SR: What was your experience prior to this internship?

EG: I didn’t have any journalism experience beyond my semester reporting at the Columbia Missourian, but I worked on different farms and ranches around the country for two years after college, so I had some knowledge of agriculture.

SR: How did you get the internship?

EG: The amazing Barbara Willis, assistant director of Career Services at MU, included the internship opening in one of her many e-mails to J-school students. My family has subscribed to Progressive Farmer for years, and I’m studying to be an agricultural journalist, so I jumped on it and sent my resume and clips to an editor.  That same editor came to Mizzou, interviewed me, and offered me the spot a month later.

SR: What is your title and what do you actually do?

EG: I’m an “editorial news intern,” but I function as a general assignment reporter, and that’s how everyone treats me, which is incredibly refreshing.

SR: What are the three biggest things you’ve learned at your internship?

EG: Ohhhh, just three?  Ok:

1. Own a good pair of boots and don’t hesitate to use them (or ask to use them). DTN is a national ag publication, so I do a lot of reporting from my desk on the phone, but they’ve been great about letting me travel for stories when I ask. And without a doubt, the stories that I pulled out my old cattle-working boots for and tromped around the floodplains of the Missouri river or through a cornfield in Kansas were the most rewarding ones.
2. Verify, verify, verify. This is especially important in agriculture, where coffee shop talk often becomes passed down as fact in farming and ranching communities (something I witnessed and participated in first hand!).  I’ve learned never to be embarrassed or feel snooty when asking someone to tell you how they know something.
3. Not everyone is going to like you. Get over it.  This one is a work in progress for me. I’ve been assigned to a lot of controversial stories this summer, which is both awesome and exhausting.  I nearly made myself ill one weekend stressing about how to write a story on a particularly divisive issue. Finally I just sat down, wrote it as honestly and accurately as I could, and called it a day.  I keep telling myself that if I try to make sure everyone likes a story on a controversial issue, I won’t be doing it properly.  But that’s going to continue to be a hard one.

SR: What’s the favorite story or stories you worked on and why?

EG: Ha, probably the one I made myself ill over!  It’s an ongoing story, but essentially the Army Corps of Engineers is fighting an agricultural outcry against their attempt to dump sediment they dredged up for an environmental project into the Missouri river. I traveled down to the Big Muddy for a media boat tour hosted by the Corps.  They even gave me a camera, which was nerve wracking.  After that I drove north and talked to two farmers with a different perspective, to put it politely.  Then I went home, fretted and pulled my hair out, and finally wrote this story.  It was a tough one, but I liked it and felt like I really earned the 1200 words DTN allowed me to use!

SR: What would you tell your previous self at the beginning of the internship?

EG: Get on social media, you twit. I really need to cave in and start using Twitter—the leads, contacts, and story ideas from it are endless.  Oh, and learn your way around a camera while you’re at it.

SR: What’s your least favorite thing about your internship?

EG: The fact that it’s temporary. There are so many things I want to tackle, but I’m leaving after the first week of August, so I’ve had to rein myself in.

SR: What are the biggest things you’ll take away to the next job/internship?

EG: I love working as an ag reporter and I think I’ll be happy to make a career of it. That’s enormously relieving, because applying to journalism school was a huge, uncertain step for me.

SR: What’s your ideal job upon graduating?

EG: Working at an ag publication, as a reporter. So, basically, what I’m doing now, but with a real salary and health insurance!

SR: What’s your dream job?

EG: Eventually, I’d love to write about agriculture for a mainstream publication, like a city newspaper or national magazine. I like writing for farmers and ranchers, but the people who really need to know more about agriculture aren’t reading ag publications.  But I have to earn my ag writing chops first. I’d say Georgina  Gustin—St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s really excellent ag and food reporter—has my dream job!

SR: When you finish your internship, what’s next?

EG: Another year of school, ho hum. Then the job search!

SR: This Internview is complete, and I must say it’s another good one.. Thanks so much to Emily Garnett who graciously volunteered to be interviewed. The next Internview is TBD.

Jul 16, 2012 | Internviews
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The amount of places that journalism has taken me added one more state Friday.

On that day, I spoke for about an hour to about 70 journalists about the power of data journalism and how they can implement some strategies in their own newsrooms.

The investigative journalism workshop was thrown by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) and hosted by the Oklahoman. You can find the long-form description here.

The group of speakers was very diverse and the crowd seemed to be very interested in what we all had to say.

In preparing my presentation, I had to decide how technical I wanted to go. For the most part, I was talking to seasoned journalists who have never even seen Terminal on their computer. I hoped to stress the importance of data and tools to rein in that data for a story.

I also hoped to emphasize tools that journalists could utilize for free and that could be used with various levels of programming experience. I talked about everything from database managers (like MySQL and PostgreSQL) to mapping tools (including Google Fusion Tables and Leaflet) to DIY data journalism (APIs and Github) and everything in between.

Based on the response I got, I think I did a good job. In talking to the person in charge of workshop surveys, there were two main things that came through when people evaluated me:

1. People loved what I had to say. A lot of attendees took a lot of value from my presentation, with one person telling me that it was like a “Christmas list for free (data) toys.”
2. My presentation went over some heads. This was probably inevitable, but I always wish I can accommodate everyone. That said, these people seemed interested in what I was saying, even if they didn’t fully understand it.

I’ll take that. I had great conversations with some folks afterwards that wanted more. I was happy to oblige and happy to see that so many people are interested in the marriage of journalism, data and programming. I’m a nerd in that respect, so it’s always nice to chat with other nerds.

I really enjoyed my first speaking engagement on data journalism and I hope that I’ll be afforded the opportunity to preach data to journalists again in the near future.

From OKC to Helsinki

If you happened to follow my tweets, you’ll know I spent about 17 more hours in Oklahoma than I had intended to. I loved Oklahoma, but the airport just wasn’t working for me.

After having my original flight delayed to the point that I’d have missed my connecting flight, Delta put me on a same-night same-time flight. That one wound up getting canceled due to mechanical issues and so I collected my $50 voucher and spent the night in town on Delta.

The next morning, I woke up early and got to the airport for my 5:30 a.m. flight, which was overbooked. Instead of getting on with my guaranteed ticket, I volunteered to get on a later flight, took my $400 flight voucher and went back to the hotel to sleep.

I got home much later than expected, but I did it $450 in free flights the richer, so I made the choice to go to a conference I otherwise never would have been able to attend.

That conference is the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki, Finland. These vouchers will pay for more than half my plane ticket and with a low admission price (100 Euros for four days), it’s hard to pass up.

Touted as the “Open Knowledge & Data event of the year,” I am very much looking forward to it. It’s during the Online News Association Conference in San Francisco, so  I’m not sure how many journalists will be there. Regardless, I feel like I’ll learn a lot.

In order to fund the remainder of the trip, I’m going to be looking for grants for educational travel. If anyone knows of anything that might apply, let me know.

As for now, I’m going to catch up with everything I intended to do yesterday before my travel got delayed.

Jul 15, 2012 | Conferences, Data Journalism, Investigative Journalism, Travel
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I’m back with another Internview and this one is from the reporter who brought Columbia, Mo., “Wardergate” in the Fall of 2011, when ward realignment became a huge issue.

The interviewee today is Karen Miller, who aside from being a friend and part-time Canadian, is a great journalist with a bright future ahead. If you’d like to follow her on Twitter, her handle is @Karen_e_Miller. Enjoy:

SR: Where are you working?

KM: The News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington.

SR: What was your experience prior to this internship?

KM: My only journalism experience prior to this internship was my year at the Columbia Missourian. I started as a reporter there last August, and I was an advanced reporter in the Spring semester. This is my first “journalism job” outside of the J-School.

Outside of journalism, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in History and a minor in English Literature. Writing and researching have always been one of my passions and that’s why I chose Journalism for my master’s.

Work-wise I spent five summers working in the gift shop at the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma. Retail just wasn’t for me.

SR: How did you get the internship?

KM: I’m a life-long Tacoman and had a few connections here. My mom actually worked at the paper in the advertising department for years. I applied like everyone else, but I also followed up on my application. I really wanted this job, so I called and ended up interviewing here and finally landed the job for the summer.

SR: What is your title and what do you actually do?

KM: I’m a reporting intern, but I’m credited as a staff writer. I sit with the Public Life team where I have an overseeing editor and a columnist who acts as my mentor. At the beginning of the summer, my plan was to rotate between beats; however, I liked my team so much I ended up staying on Public Life full time. It’s a really collaborative newsroom, so I get pulled in on all sorts of General Assignment reporting, such as weather, pool openings and a few business clips. The best thing about this internship is they want to give you the clips that will build your portfolio. Their consideration when I’m assigned something is “will this help you in the future” not “what can we toss the intern.”

SR: What are the three biggest things you’ve learned at your internship?

KM: 1. Always stay calm. Freaking out doesn’t help you pick up the phone and call people.
2. Don’t beat yourself up about anything. Everyone has a day where they are less than their best.
3. If something does go haywire on you, tell your editor. They probably already know you’re upset, and talking to them will help you get over it.

SR: What’s the favorite story or stories you worked on and why?

KM: I had a big day of reporting in late-June where I had two shared bylines. The stories were so vastly different that it made for a really memorable day. For one, I had to sample about 13 different food items, especially deep-fried, at the Taste of Tacoma, and for the other I had to cover a community effort against a halfway house for sex offenders. I literally ate a deep-fried Twinkie, drove back to the newsroom, got in another car and went door-to-door in a neighborhood.

I’ve been keeping a list of “things I can’t believe I got published in my hometown paper,” which I’ll post a full version of on my blog once I finish. Some of the highlights are “Leninist weapon,” “poop” and “dope bag.” Additionally, at last calculation, I have interviewed two people with concealed weapons. At least, that’s the number of people who have told me they have a concealed weapon. It’s Tacoma, so possibly everyone I interviewed was packing.

SR: What is the biggest thing you’ll take away to the next job/internship?

KM: The biggest thing I’ll take away from this internship is new relationships. I really like everyone I work with here, especially my overseeing editor. Since I’ll be moving into an editing postion when I return to Missouri, watching my editor do her job was really helpful. She’s incredibly calm, and after working here I can see what a huge asset calm people are in a newsroom.

The other reporters I met were really genuine people. I never felt like I was “just an intern.” Everyone treated me like an equal, and they gave me some really great ideas for stories. That meant a lot to me because these are well-established reporters and columnists that I grew up reading.

SR: What’s your ideal job upon graduating?

KM: I’m not really the type of person to have an ideal job. I just want to continue writing, meeting people and serving the public. My ideal job has good people. Office camaraderie is really important to me because I have a lot of inane observations on life that I need other people to listen to in order to stay sane. I don’t think I could work from home, alone. I guess there’s always Twitter, but that’s not really the same compared to chatting at someone’s desk about life, journalism and crazy situations.

SR: What’s your dream job?

KM: Maybe I’m a little strange, but I don’t really have a dream job. I took a gamble on journalism, and I’ve loved every minute of it. My dream is to be steadily writing and impacting readers for the rest of my life. I also love working with like-minded reporters in a newsroom setting. That’s what’s so special about the News Tribune for me.

SR: When you finish your internship, what’s next?

KM: I’ll head back for a final year of J-School. In fact, I’ll make a 2,000-mile trek BACK to Missouri in my truck, my third cross country trip since starting my masters.

I’ll be an Assistant City Editor for the Missourian, and I’ll take a two-week trip to Beijing to cover the China Open tennis tournament in the late Fall. Hopefully I will finish my degree, project and all by Fall 2013.

SR: What would you tell your previous self at the beginning of the internship?

KM: Buy new clothes. I did this in my third week, and it made me feel like a whole new person. Also, ask your editor to put you on all the newsroom email lists early on so you aren’t taken by surprise on “free hot dog day.”

And on a serious note, make the most of every day because it is going to fly by faster than you realized.

SR: What do you like least about your internship?

KM: It’s hard reporting in your hometown because all of a sudden everyone you know becomes a source. It’s also really hard to separate emotions from reporting when you are in a place you love. Oh! And everyone you know is looking for your byline. One of my dad’s gym buddies said to him the other day, “Karen hasn’t been in the paper for awhile.” No pressure, right?

Tacoma means a lot to me. I feel like it courses through my blood. At every turn and with everything I covered, there was some back story in my life. It was a little draining, but in the end much more rewarding than reporting elsewhere. So I guess it’s not what I “like least,” it’s really the biggest challenge.

SR: Internview number two is in the books. Thanks so much to Karen Miller who graciously volunteered to be interviewed. The next Internview will be with Emily Garnett of The Progressive Farmer out of Omaha.

Jul 13, 2012 | Internviews
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Welcome one and all to the first installment of Internviews. This will be a regular segment on my blog where I chat with interns working across the country for perspective on a variety of journalism jobs.

The first interviewee is Alison Matas, who judging by her twitter feed, was busy reporting on a trial today. Alison graciously agreed to be the first person interviewed, and for that I am very grateful. Enjoy:

SR: Where are you working?

AM: I’m at the Charleston Gazette, which is the largest newspaper in West Virginia and is located in the state capital.

SR: What was your experience prior to this internship?

AM: I graduated from Marietta College with my B.A. in journalism in 2011. I’d been editor-in-chief of the college’s newspaper for two years and done some freelancing for one of the school’s magazines. I spent the summer of 2010 working as a reporter for the Chautauquan Daily in western New York, and I spent the summer of 2011 working as a writer for Kent Patch. At Missouri, I worked my first semester as an enterprise reporter for the Columbia Missourian. During my second semester, I was a copy editor for the Missourian and freelanced some feature stories for VOX and the Missourian.

SR: How did you get the internship?

AM: I begged. Just kidding. I sent some clips, a cover letter and my resume in December and corresponded with the executive editor a bit. At the end of January, I had a brief interview, which basically just served as a job offer.

I think it helped, though, that Marietta (where I did undergrad) is pretty close to Charleston, so I was already somewhat familiar with the area. I’ve also learned that the Gazette has had many reporters from Mizzou and often recruits there.

SR: What is your title and what do you actually do?

AM: My title is intern, but my byline says staff writer. I appreciate that because I try to avoid the looks of fear my sources inevitably get on their faces when they find out I’m an intern.

Really, I’m a general assignment reporter for the paper. I’ve covered meetings and festivals, written about national reports and filed many feature stories. Last week, I put on my running clothes and climbed through hills and weeds to interview power line workers, if that gives you a better idea of my job.

SR: What are the three biggest things you’ve learned at your internship?

AM:

1. You can always write faster.
2. The Gazette competes with another, smaller newspaper in town, the Charleston Daily Mail. If I’m at an event with a Daily Mail reporter, we’re going to have a lot of the same basic information in our stories. My job, then, is to find a way to make my story better, whether that’s through asking smarter questions or using more description in my writing. The sense of competition is pervasive, and I think that’s helped me step up my game.
3. I’ve really improved two skill sets—using my notebook instead of a recorder and including narrative detail in my writing.

SR: What’s the favorite story or stories you worked on and why?

AM: The beauty of getting to be a full-fledged reporter for this paper is that I have a lot to choose from, but it’s also making it difficult!

One of my favorites, though, was covering the state’s Democratic convention, where the delegates voted on their platform for the 2012 election. They also passed a resolution saying all candidates must publicly support the entire Democratic ticket. That’s a big deal in West Virginia because two of the state’s top Democratic leaders have been saying they’re not sure if they’re going to vote for President Obama in the fall (because of his stance on coal, primarily). My story got a shout-out on one of Politico’s major blogs, so that was especially exciting.

SR: What are the biggest thing you’ll take away to the next job/internship?

AM: I think this job has reminded me, once again, that I really love being a journalist. And, of course, I’ll be using the lessons I’ve learned wherever I go next.

SR: What would you tell your previous self at the beginning of the internship?

AM: Alison, chill out. You are going to like it here. They are going to like you. You’ll get to write a lot of stories. And just because first days are always kind of terrible doesn’t mean that’s how the rest of this job is going to be.

SR: What do you like least about your internship?

AM: There’s usually one day a week when I don’t leave the newsroom at all because I’m working on something that’s all phone interviews. My jobs will probably always be that way, but I don’t love it.

SR: What’s your ideal job upon graduating?

AM: I’d like to work for a newspaper in a major city for a while, maybe somewhere along the east coast.

SR: What’s your dream job?

AM: I ask myself this regularly because I just can’t decide. I’d either like to be an editor at a major newspaper, or I’d like to be an investigative reporter for a nonprofit journalism organization, such as the Center for Public Integrity.

SR: When you finish your internship, what’s next?

AM: I’ll go back to Missouri for one more semester of classes. And I will begin my full-fledged panic attack about where I’m going to do my professional project in the spring.

SR: That’s it for the first Internview. Thanks so much to Alison Matas who gracious volunteered to be the first person interviewed. The next Internview will be with Karen Miller of the Tacoma News Tribune.

Jul 10, 2012 | Internviews
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Perhaps the biggest trap a journalist can fall into is just trusting their large datasets.

It’s all well and good that you got your hands on a large chunk of data, but the question you should ask is “Is it accurate?”

As the saying goes, “to err is human” and there’s always the possibility that those compiling the data may have miscoded a thing or two. Despite this, if something is misreported because of an error, the fault still falls on the reporter and not those that made the initial error.

Many people think that data journalism involves sitting in a corner of the newsroom pouring over data all day.

Sure, there are days like that, especially when building out a larger database and analyzing the data.

However, if you believe that we have no human contact outside the confines of our office space, think again.

I spent the vast majority of the past two days calling about 50 people to ground-truth my data. I had to take rain checks for a few people so I’ll be back on the phone again Monday.

I talked to folks all over the United States from Los Angeles to New Orleans, Florida to Wyoming, Maine to Nevada and nearly everywhere in between.

It was a lot of fun and I talked to a lot of interesting people. Most importantly, my ground-truthing was a rousing success, which brings me to another of Tony’s Tips:

926. Always ground-truth your data. When you are finished, then you can move on.

After much success, I am very excited that I am ready to move on in my story. It’s really shaping up well and I am confident that the end product will be something I’ll be very proud of for a long time.

And now for something completely different.

I’ve been immersing myself into more and more code as the summer wears on. Part of the reason I’m doing this is to prepare myself for the creation of the Columbia Missourian’s News Apps/Data desk, for which yours truly will be editor. If you’re interested in this desk, follow the desk’s efforts on Twitter.

Part of the reason I’m doing it is because I just can’t get enough. The more I look at others’ code, the more I want to, as ProPublica News Apps Developer Al Shaw once told me, reverse engineer those apps.

The only way I’ve found to subdue this desire is to actually reverse engineer the apps I love. It’s time consuming, and many times frustrating, but it’s almost always rewarding in the end. My skills are developing day by day and I’ll be excited to put some of it into action at the Missourian and at DocumentCloud in the Fall.

Jul 7, 2012 | Coding, Data Journalism, Internship, News Apps
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During my internship, my boss, Tony, decided he would start a series called “Tony’s Tips.” While the first one was Tony’s tip #1, they don’t necessarily come in number order.

Today, I received tip #564 and it’s a good one that I felt I should share.

564. When working in a spreadsheet or database, put columns in a chronological order.

It’s a simple one, but it’s a good one when it comes to viewing trends and/or graphing data.

It makes no sense to graph data in reverse-chronological order. This seems like an easy concept, but when you’re working with analysis of a large sum of data, it slips the mind.

For example, I showed Tony a spreadsheet full of data analysis for my data over the past five years. However, everything was in reverse chronological order. When he showed me a graph, I could see the error of my ways.

I write each down and take it to heart because this is the kind of stuff I want to do in my career.

I wish I could share what data I’m working with, but alas, it would give away the ending.

However, I can tell you that this is uncharted territory. I am very excited about how it’s turning out and I’ll be more excited to share it with you. The story has been done on a much smaller scale, so I think this will be of great value.

I am happy that this internship is a mix of practical experience and learning. With both, I am quickly becoming a better data journalist and that’s all I could want out of an internship. Except maybe a job.

Jul 3, 2012 | Data Journalism, Internship
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One of the reasons I started this blog was to share my experiences so others could learn from them. I’m a naturally inquisitive person, and I figured many others would be the same.

That being said, my experience is just a small slice of the journalism. That’s why I am enlisting the help of other interns working across the country to share their insight in a feature I’m calling “Internviews.”

Be they beat reporters, copyeditors, multimedia journalists, photographers or any kind of journalist you can think of; I’m going to try to get them on here to talk about what they’ve learned interning in some of the biggest newsrooms across the country.

I’ve already begun enlisting folks, but if you’re an intern doing cool stuff in a newsroom, I’d love to talk to you. Let me know if you’re interested.

Similarly, if you’re a journalist in a newsroom and would like to nominate one of your interns to be featured on my blog, I’d be all for it.

The first installment of this series will be coming early this coming week so stay tuned.

Jun 30, 2012 | Internviews
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Everything is great. Everything is grand. I’ve got the whole wide world in the palm of my hand. Everything is perfect. It’s falling into place. I can’t seem to wipe this smile off my face.

-Lyrics from The Muppets Movie

These lyrics describe my day in a nutshell. Today was a great day for a few reasons.

First, I entered the honeymooning phase with my data. Besides a small error in importing one of my columns, which I fixed, it was a day filled with interviewing my data.

As tedious as compiling a massive database from scratch is, the analysis is so much fun, it’s totally worth every minute. And when trends start appearing everywhere, it’s almust too much fun.

With this data, it seems that the Data Gods hath blessed me. While not every analysis I ran reaped trends, many of them did. I wish I could tell you about all the interesting trends I found in the data, or even what the data actually covers, but that will come when a story or multiple stories (a man can dream) get published.

Outside of enjoying my honeymoon phase, I had a really interesting learning session with my boss, Tony, and a few other coworkers. I learned a bit about using Regular Expressions, commonly known as Regex.

If you don’t know what Regex is, and have interest in knowing, check out this website. Already know it? Check out this awesome Regex testing site.

The thing I really love about my internship is that I am learning a ton. Biweekly hour-long coding sessions with the data team have been great and I wish everyone could join in.

Finally, I had the opportunity to meet with Brent Jones, the USA Today/Gannett internship director, and chat about what’s going on.

He asked me, going into this meeting, to compile a list of a few people I want to meet while I’m here. As a result, I will be meeting with USA Today Executive Editor Susan Weiss next week. I’m quite excited for that meeting.

Also, I will be chatting with the people who create the crossword puzzles at USA Today, which I regularly attempt. I am ecstatic to get a glimpse into the minds of those who test mine. Also, Karen Miller, a fellow Mizzou grad student and current Tacoma News Tribune intern, asked me to thank them. You’re welcome in advance, Karen.

That’s it and that’s all. I’m going to enjoy my weekend off by relaxing and maybe reading a good book. I’m very much looking forward to it.

Jun 29, 2012 | Coding, Data Journalism, Internship
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