We are a community group of journalists and others who work in the media, or are planning to in the future. Together, we aim to learn and share ✨ technical skills for use in our reporting in a supportive environment.
That might be 🔎 data analysis as part of an investigation, 💻 scraping data from government websites, 📉 building data visualisations to better tell a story, or something else entirely.
We meet monthly to learn and network. All sessions are appropriate for complete beginners and above.
September ‘24 (Canva, Hoxton)
See Meetup notes 👉 September 2024 Dropbox
- https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musk-politics-analysis-06a5b9e4
- https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2024/08/15/easy-ai-zero-shot-ai-image-classification-smart-image-sorter/
- Somewhat related, and before gen-AI tech was widely available, I did some work a few years back about calculating “average faces” using a similar process via OpenCV and pre-calculated face-analysis models as in tonight’s tutorial:
- British MPs: https://puntofisso.medium.com/i-calculated-the-average-face-of-a-uk-member-of-parliament-and-heres-what-i-found-37f31b72b5d9
- then with the BBC we replicated it with US Congress (we even shipped a journalist with the printout of the face to show Senators – watch the video, it’s fun!): https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171018-this-is-the-face-of-the-average-american-politician
- and then I did a commission that looked at average faces of Vogue covers, which is interesting because what stands out is that the American face is more smiley than others: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/vogue-cover-model-average-face-study-us-russia-france-japan-a8482356.html (the archived https://web.archive.org/web/20181122011534/https://www.myvouchercodes.co.uk/faces-of-fashion for the full set)
- step-by-step instructions on my blog https://puntofisso.net/blog/posts/average-face-release/ (the Colab notebook is at https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1UMSvbSQ-c5RBdNo_g1FkF2x_92AntqZ_#scrollTo=tauthUWsEHwO)
- https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/ministers-database
- https://github.com/instituteforgov/ifg-ministers-database-public/
October ‘24 (News Building)
See Meetup notes 👉 October 2024 Dropbox
- https://earth.nullschool.net/
- https://tubeprices.thelondonspy.co.uk/ & https://tuberents.thelondonspy.co.uk/
- https://whatif.sonycsl.it/15mincity/15min.php?idcity=5076
- https://helpcenter.flourish.studio/hc/en-us/articles/8827954285583-How-to-create-a-grid-of-charts#custom-layout
- https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-uber-lyft-nyc-drivers-pay-lockouts/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=twitter?sref=SvE2Uk5z&embedded-checkout=true
- https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cest-la-viz-tickets-910746747037#:~:text=CEST%2DLA%2DVIZ%20is%20a%20window%20to%20the%20world.,the%20state%20we%20are%20in.
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/17/world/asia/india-pollution-inequality.html
- UCOVI Data Viz (ucovi-data.com) - Python based-text analysis on debates in the UK House of Comments.
November ‘24 (did not attend; in Rome)
See Meetup notes 👉 November 2024 Dropbox
- Visualising difficulty https://pudding.cool/2024/10/abortion-mazes/
- Beeswarms to area charts https://pudding.cool/2024/11/love-songs/
- How Red and Blue America Shop, Eat and Live https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/04/upshot/place-politics.html
- https://x.com/mariepastora/status/1853977510133780543
- https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1gl5boe/one_square_mile_of_iowa_18482024/
December ‘24 (News Building)
See Meetup notes 👉 December 2024 Dropbox
- https://journocoders.bsky.social
- https://firehose3d.theo.io
- https://www.visprex.com
- https://biketheft.thelondonspy.co.uk
- https://www.tortoisemedia.com/peer-review-explore-tool
- https://fossheim.io/writing/posts/2024-dataviz-a11y-elections/
- https://ig.ft.com/ai-robots/
- https://challenge.bellingcat.com/
Julia Janicki, currently at Bloomberg, has put out some brilliant work including this interactive piece on bubble tea (passion project; graphics by Daisy Chung).
February ‘25 (Canva)
See Meetup notes 👉 February 2025 Dropbox
- https://www.datavisualizationsociety.org/soti-report-2024
- https://www.chronotrains.com/en/explore/2643743-London
- https://mrgris.com/projects/merc-extreme/a4739c9b@51.52440,-0.07753
- https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/environment/6562743/dolphin-whale-watching-western-isles-ferry-scotland/
- https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2025/02/06/announcing-data-gov-archive/
- VizChitra: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gurmanbhatia_hi-fellow-data-viz-enthusiasts-several-data-activity-7295313245597241344-YaKi
April ‘25 (not in attendance)
See Meetup notes 👉 April 2025 Dropbox
- https://github.com/andjames/journocoders — Andrew James (not here tonight) from satellite data company Spire put together this list of examples of using their data to do interesting stuff. They’re a paid platform but he says he can set up journalists with free access — andrew.james@spire.com
- https://github.com/ajstarks/dubois-data-portraits/blob/master/challenge/2025/README.md
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/ff1c51aaa313af22
- https://www.tortoisemedia.com/hot-air-explore-tool
Space journalism: analyse the world using satellites with Google Earth Engine
Tutorial: Cloud-Based Remote Sensing with Google Earth Engine
This is the first chapter from a book! If you get through it you might want to take a look at the other chapters.
To access Google Earth Engine you’ll need to login with a Google account. If you haven’t used Earth Engine before it will prompt you to register a new project (screenshot). Follow the subsequent steps making sure you select “Unpaid usage” and “Create a new Google Cloud Project”. You should then be redirected to the code editor and can being following the tutorial.
