#Sparktweets: Wall Street Journal visualising data in tweets

NEWS:REWIRED – by Sarah Marshall

The Wall Street Journal has started using data visualisation (albeit in a fairly simple form) in tweets, using an online tool called Sparkblocks. The tweets are being called “sparktweets”.

And other so-called sparktweets have since been created:

We tracked the use of the hashtag #sparktweets using Hashtags.org:

Zach Seward’s blog explains how the Wall Street Journal’s unemployment sparktweet came about. He says that the team first tried using Unicode to display graphics in tweets, but found there were problems when viewing on Macs. [Read more…]

10 things every journalist should know about data

NEWS:REWIRED: by SARAH MARSHALL

Picture from News:Rewired website

Every journalist needs to know about data. It is not just the preserve of the investigative journalist but can – and should – be used by reporters writing for local papers, magazines, the consumer and trade press and for online publications.

Think about crime statistics, government spending, bin collections, hospital infections and missing kittens and tell me data journalism is not relevant to your title.

If you think you need to be a hacker as well as a hack then you are wrong. Although data journalism combines journalism, research, statistics and programming, you may dabble but you don’t need to know much maths or code to get started. It can be as simple as copying and pasting data from an Excel spreadsheet. [Read more…]

 

Announcing news:rewired – noise to signal, 27 May 2011

NEWS REWIRED

Logo from the News:Rewired website

Journalism.co.uk’s next News:Rewired event will take place on 27 May at Thomson Reuters’ London offices.

What’s it about?

news:rewired – noise to signal is a one-day event for journalists and communications professionals who want to learn more about the latest tools and strategies to filter large datasets, social networks, and audience metrics into a clear signal for both the editorial and business side of the news industry. [Read more…]