Research

Natalie “Talia” Jomini Stroud is an associate professor of Communication Studies and assistant director of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Participation at the University of Texas at Austin.

It’s a dilemma that almost every general-assignment reporter, producer or editor faces: A new, complex topic and a fast-approaching deadline. As specialty beats are cut back, it’s a situation that is more and more common in newsrooms today.

Data can make a story. It can be the backbone of an investigation, and it can lead to new insights and new ways of thinking. Unfortunately, the data you want isn’t always readily available. It’s often on the web, but it isn’t always packaged up and available for download. In cases like these, you might want to leverage a technique called web scraping to programmatically gather the data for you.

Just a decade or so ago, most of the fruits of academia were relegated to library shelves and narrow circles of specialists — journals and the studies within them were placed a long way away from the immediate reach of the public and the media.

In December 2014 the Knight Foundation and Carnegie Corporation announced continued funding for an effort to reform journalism education. Below, John Wihbey of Journalist’s Resource reflects on the progress of the initiative in the context of wider media trends.

Journalists constantly face the challenge of explaining why things happened: What were the factors in an election victory? What are the reasons behind housing segregation in a city? What is the explanation for a low-performing school? In daily journalism, we are often content to quote relevant sources or officials, and let them do the “explaining.”