When you have Associated Press nerd-journalist extraordinaire Jonathan Stray giving 
a brilliant explanation of the use of data-mining strategies to wring the sense out of massive numbers of documents — such as the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs released by Wikileaks — you go with it. And I do mean brilliant. Every investigative reporter in America ought to listen to all 19+ minutes of this audio-powerpoint presentation. (Big h/t to Maria Popova, editor of Brain Pickings.)
Tag Archives: data mining
More journalistic data mining in the public interest
Filed under data mining, investigative journalism, Wikileaks
Data-mining, explained at high level
When you find the best data-mining blogger o
n Earth, I guess you have to go with him.
Filed under data mining, You go with it
Developing the future of investigative journalism
If you’re a cutting-edge geek with an interest in investigative journalism, there’s a great job opening at the badly named Reporter’s Lab, a project supported by Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy. Headed up by former Washington Post editor and reporter Sarah Cohen, the Reporter’s Lab is Duke’s effort to extend what is known as “computational journalism” into the realm of investigative reporting and thereby make investigative reporters more efficient and effective. (I wrote my take on this effort, “Deep Throat Meets Data Mining,” back in 2009; you can find it behind the “columns” tab on the home page of this blog.) The lab, which has an advisory committee that includes many of the top names in American investigative reporting, is looking for a developer, and the description makes it sound like a dream job to me. But then again, I don’t do much in the way of coding (yet). If you do and want to help journalism and advance the public interest in a significant way, you really ought to take a look.
Filed under computer algorithms, media, program developers
John Mecklin, writer/editor 