Tomorrow, Wed. Sept. 8, we’ll be discussing “Finding the story in the data” at #wjchat, and I have been tapped to host. (One might ask why, they must really be running low on people….I kid, I kid.)

This issue is extremely important, and one that must be addressed by the Web journalism groups. There’s a difference between telling a journalistic story, but lacking the data and displaying data in an aesthetically pleasing way that doesn’t really tell a story. The best data journalism does both. It’s rare, and I believe we all need to work harder at doing more of it. A tall order for someone to do alone, or even a team, but if the community puts its collective head together, we’ve got a better shot.

I couldn’t be more excited to discuss some of the issues I’ve been spending much of the last year internalizing. I have some better ideas about this now than I did back last September, I hope, but it’s also one of my favorite topics to ponder, because there are so many ideas I know I haven’t considered. I hope to report back with a nice compilation of links and thoughts once we tap into the community’s knowledge, but for now, I’m just spreading the word.

If you read this blog, but aren’t familiar with #wjchat, it’s a gathering on Twitter on Wednesday evenings where we discuss various aspects of online journalism. It ranges from social media, to video, to how to get a job, to data. I love all the facets of journalism, so it’s a great way to guarantee yourself some great conversation and learning all wrapped up into one package. At 5 Pacific, 8 Eastern, on Wednesday, that’s tomorrow, just hop on over to Twitter and follow the hashtag #wjchat. I find it easier to follow via tweetchat.com, which gives you a little chatroom that has a nicer interface than twitter.com — the conversation can get fast and furious.

In the meantime, if there are specific topics you’d like to see discussed, or questions you’d like asked, get at me before, or during the chat.

And if you’re one of my dear NICARian mentors, it’d be really fantastic if you could find the time to drop by. Anything I’ve picked up in my career thus far is minimal, and I owe it all to the collective wisdom of those who’ve taught me what I know as a journalist and a programmer.

See you in the virtual space!

Explore other posts:

• February 1, 2009 -- Corrections
• February 18, 2010 -- Many Eyes: “Catalyzing the community around data”
• January 31, 2010 -- Data Delver: Tyson Evans, NY Times Interface Engineer
• September 6, 2010 -- What’s regex again? Why should journos care?
• March 2, 2010 -- Guest Post: Integrating data with our journalism
• January 4, 2010 -- My new perspective on math – it’s a journalistic tool!

You may have heard the term “regex” before — short for regular expressions. And compared to the way we talk and write, they’re anything but regular. But choosing between writing the “regex to rule them all” as I’ve been calling it, in a not-so-veiled reference to Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings geek trilogy, or copying and pasting tens of thousands of records by hand, I’ll take the former any day.

So, if you want to get through a large, unstructured set of data quickly, and make sense of the unsensical, regex is a great way to go. But your pattern had better be consistent. Computers don’t do well with exceptions, after all.

And if you’re a journo who doesn’t want to throw yourself into programming, here’s the one thing you should take away. If you have a document that could be a database, maybe there’s some dollar amounts, and you’d like to know the biggest one and what category it’s associated with, why not go to your programmer and ask if it’s something regex can help solve? Worst case scenario: your programmer says it’s not the right fit.

Some of my favorite explanations of regex are:

• Google’s tutorial in text and video
• Better explanation than I can give is here on Ben Welsh’s site, as per usual
• Simple syntax reference
• Python/PHP regex tester – Plug your text and pattern in, and it’ll tell you if you messed up.  My best friend as of late (which says something about my social life, but I digress).

So, a mini foray into how this works. A poorly-written regex looks like this:

‘[0-9]{1}\)[ ]{0,20}([A-Z0-9\n ]{1}[\w\d\n\(\)\"\'\.\:\,\;\-" /]*[\#]{0,1}[\w\d\n\(\)\"\'\.\;\:\,\-" /]*\.{1}?[\"]{0,1})’

Stop screaming. A less frightening one:
‘\$([0-9]{1,2}[\.]{0,1}[0-9]{0,2})’

Both of those are hand-crafted, newbie coder at work examples.

The second one isn’t any more intelligible.  That’s not better? Let’s break it down.

Some simple tips:

• A regular expression is a string of numbers, letters and special characters. You use your language of choice to parse it (I’m partial to Python, access the parser by importing “re”. Easy enough to remember.
• Define the range of characters you are looking for in brackets. [0-9] means looks for characters that are digits between 0 and 9. Do the same for letters A-Z or a-z, or specify specific letters: [t] means t is the only acceptable character.
• After you define your range in brackets, follow it by saying how many times you are looking for such a character. {2} means it needs to appear 2 times to match, no more, no less. {0,2} means the characters can show up 0, 1, or 2 times. Include 0 in your frequency if you want to be more flexible, and allow this range to be optional.
• Type . to include all characters.
• Type * in your frequency to include the character 0 or more times, + for one or more times.
• If you only have one character in your range or frequency, you can leave your [] or {} out.
• If you want to define a start and end to your pattern, but not include that in what the computer returns, or spits back to you, enclose the part you care about in () and the rest will get junked
• If you are including a special character in your range, such as searching for all ., you need to escape it, or use the \ key in front of it.
• Escaping characters that don’t need to be escaped can’t hurt, at least in my experiments. But forget to escape a character, and you have hours of debugging ahead of you, because of a missing \. Yes, I speak from painful experience.

There’s more, but that’s a good start. So, what does this mean?:

‘\$([0-9]{1,2}[\.]{0,1}[0-9]{0,2})’

Search for strings of characters that start with a $, are followed by one or two numerical digits, followed by 0 or 1 dots, followed by 0, 1, or 2 digits. What does that spell? A price that conforms to AP style. It’ll catch whole numbers ($25) or those with cents attached ($25.50) or prices below $10 with cents attached ($1.25). Pull your budget numbers out of that ghastly text file the city council gave you.

How do I use that regex?

Okay, okay, good point. I’ll tell you how in Python. Let’s say we’re searching for all prices in a file.
Here’s some line by line commented code to help you through it, and save all the prices to a CSV spreadsheet.

#Open the file you're reading from
file = open('raw_file.txt', "r")
#Read the file into a variable, so you can access it
file_to_search = f.read()
#Save your regex pattern into a variable.  Use the r before the opening quote to tell the computer it's a raw string, otherwise it may try to convert it into unicode.  I've noticed Python has a tendency to interpret my unicode strings as raw, and my raw strings as unicode, unless I'm explicit about what I mean.  And as the <a href="http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/">Zen of Python</a> says, "Explicit is better than implicit."
price_pattern = r'\$([0-9]{1,2}[\.]{0,1}[0-9]{0,2})'
#Create a list of all pieces of text in your file that match the pattern.  List the pattern as the first item in the parens (otherwise known as an argument), list the file you're search in as the second argument, add the third argument re.DOTALL if you want the . character, which signifies all characters to include newlines -- this tripped me up at first
price_list = re.findall(price_pattern, file_to_search, re.DOTALL)
#Open a CSV object, which you can save list items into, the a means that every time you write a new row, you append the new rows of text, and avoid overwriting what's already in the file
writer = csv.writer(open("prices.csv", "a"))

To figure out the rest of how to write this to a CSV, modify teacher Ben’s recipe — it’s how I figured it out. After all, this is about regex, not CSV writing.

Or, do whatever you want with that list. You could sort it to find the highest or average price…possibilities really are endless.

Oh, and what went wrong with that first, horrificly long example I gave you?  Didn’t know you could use . to signify all characters.  You try specifying every single character that could possibly be used in a string of text.  You’ll always end up forgetting at least one.  The lesson there: the computer is better at catching all instances of something than you are.  Don’t try to compete.  Accept its’ strength and move on.  Your strength: The computer can’t read the human language you’re parsing.  So, point one for us.

Explore other posts:

• February 22, 2010 -- “Demos, not memos”: My first Django app
• February 15, 2010 -- Data Delver: Lisa Pickoff-White, California Watch
• February 9, 2010 -- Treemapping Gov. Quinn’s State of the State
• December 30, 2009 -- Changes in how we travel across U.S. borders
• February 9, 2010 -- Repetition, repetition: The power of multiples
• January 25, 2010 -- Personal reflection: Tufte’s messing with my head

I’ve been paying rapt attention to the journey of designer/journalist Chris Courtney.  He’s fighting a battle bigger than the ones we fight against agencies refusing to hand over document, journalists stuck in an old mindset, people too bored by media to become informed.  He’s fighting cancer.

We don’t know each other, Chris, but I’ve followed your work, and I’ve been meaning to introduce myself.  I can’t help but feel connected to you, though.  Reading your thoughts reminds me of my own similar journey. And having spent the day arguing with Javascript functions, and wanting to punch them in their metaphorical faces, it’s easy to forget there was a time when I had much bigger issues.  Life-threatening illnesses have a way of clarifying things.

Reading Chris’ thoughts reminds me of a time in my own life I don’t talk much about, but I don’t avoid it either.  Back in 2002, I was diagnosed with IgA Nephropathy, an illness that caused my immune system to attack my kidneys as if they were foreign, resulting in kidney failure, and ultimately a transplant in 2006, which I received from my dear aunt Karen Kwan.  More background on this in a Medill article I wrote when I returned to UIC as a journalist: This time, it’s not my kidney

For too many days to count, it was the focus of my life.  Tends to happen when you don’t have the energy to move, or even write.  And you wouldn’t know it now, other than the fact that the experience forces me to examine each day and ask myself what I did with the gift of life.

I suppose this is a letter to Chris more than anything. I’m heartened to see your positive attitude.  I believe that’s what enables people to get through situations like this.  Also key — a great network of support from friends and family.  Don’t be afraid to come to them for anything you might need, help making a meal, advice, or what I found most helpful — a friendly ear ready to listen.

I applauded out loud when I read your dismissal of flowery get-well cards that could just as easily be expressing thoughts of sympathy.  I mean, come on, I tell my editor when I don’t agree with him, I argue with sources all the time.  And the stories my parents can tell you about when I was a teenager, okay, yesterday.  So, kidney failure, cancer, whatever you are.  You think you can scare me?  Hit me with your best shot.

These sorts of illnesses have a way of giving you life clarity.  Chris explains that the only thing > than cancer is death.  But “My team losing < Cancer.”  Absolutely true. I find this to be a double-edged sword.  I value everything in life a lot more.  I care a little bit, no, a lot, less that your boyfriend broke up with you.  Because, you see, I could respond to it all saying “Try living with kidney failure.  Do you like how you have the strength to stand? That’s not a guarantee.”  Looking at life that way gets quite tiring, though.  But ultimately it’s another feather, and a big one, in your cap of life experience.

And Chris, I couldn’t agree with you more about being too young for all this. Take it from the girl who went to a session on post-kidney-failure options at Northwestern Memorial and passed out after looking at all the “old people.”  Only time I passed out in my life, by the way.  Oh, except for when I was five, and that tall guy kicked the soccer ball into my head.  </michellesathleticcareer>  Point is, you look around.  And you’re not supposed to be in that hospital, you’re not supposed to be bailing on your friends cause you’re tired.  But that’s what life’s thrown at you.  You discover your true friends, discover what’s important.  And by the way, when are you old enough to get sick?  I have some relatives in their 80s who would tell you they’re too young to get sick.  And that attitude, I argue, is part of what keeps them out of the hospital.

Yeah, hospitals suck.  What do you mean I can’t take my phone into the operating room?  What’s your wireless access code?  My story: the nurses eventually told me I could use the Internet on the nurses’ station computer if I did a lap around the floor.  The 180 seconds they alloted me was less than I use in a 10-minute window on a routine basis.  When I was well enough that the tech situation really bugged me, it was time to go home.  And in the meantime, I grew to appreciate my friends and family more than ever.  And did a lot of thinking and contemplating. We don’t make time for that in our workaday lives.  When you’re forced to slow down, things seem a bit different.

As a journalist, the process is fascinating.  You have your own window onto the beat of your medical condition.  I can tell you all about kidneys now.  And I follow future developments in the field like it’s my job.  Because someday my transplanted kidney will fail.  The medication we take to protect a transplant also contains ingredients that destroy kidneys over time.  And this time, I probably won’t get a donation without going on dialysis.  But that’s no reason to give up.  Only a reason to press on in the present!

Don’t get me wrong, dealing with this sort of thing is all horribly unpleasant, unbearable at times.  But your support system and your optimism will aid you in giving your nemesis your best shot.  And that’s all you can ask of yourself.

I would never say everything’s going to be okay, to anyone going through this sort of thing.  I hated when people told me that.  Show me the data on that one, how can you tell the future?  But I do believe you’ve got a better shot if you kick, scream and fight against it with all your might.  That’s why journalists are so well prepared to fight these sort of battles.  It’s what we do every day.

And as for my life now? Well, I’m behind you 1000 percent.  And I’ll be watching, Chris.  And thinking of you.  Take cancer down.  If you happen to see the UIC chief of surgery, Enrico Benedetti, say hello to my dear friend, who was head of the transplant team when I was there in 2006.  And if you need anything at all, you know where to find me.  But I won’t be sending any flowery cards, electronic, handwritten or otherwise.

And when you’re not too busy fighting the fight, and relishing the extra time with your family and friends, we need you here in the journo world.  After all, cancer or no cancer, kidney failure or no kidney failure, there’s work to be done.

Explore other posts:

• April 5, 2010 -- Women with coding skills are no Passover miracle
• March 28, 2010 -- Data Delver: Mark Schaver, Louisville Courier
• July 11, 2010 -- First LAT app (or the butterfly on my windowsill)
• June 13, 2010 -- Post IRE wrap-up + shameless self-promotion
• April 5, 2009 -- State of Healthcare Journalism
• November 25, 2009 -- The limitations of SQL and Access

So, there’s that. First launch!

My checklist:

• Figure out what part of journalism inspires me. CHECK (Data, programming)
• Find place where I can learn about it from others, but have freedom to try out my ideas and learn from knowledgeable and patient folks. CHECK (LAT)
• Use this opportunity to learn enough about programming to create at least one app. CHECK (See first line of post)

That was a good time.

I’m planning a post on best practices for creating a searchable database application like this, with examples, and technical geekery, and all that, and I’d love your thoughts in the meantime.  Let me know if you have specific questions.

But in a moment of self-reflection, I’d just like to say this.

I was sitting in my apartment this morning, and found that a butterfly had somehow gotten in (blame a broken screen, maybe).  It sat on my windowsill, facing the outside world.  It would feel around the window, trying to find an opening.  After circling the perimeter of the window, it laid back down, almost motionless, just searching.  An hour later, the cycle repeated.  Wanting to help the poor butterfly, after watching it struggle, I tried to capture it in a small box to take it downstairs.  It was too smart for that.  Fine.  What actually worked?  Covering all the windows and opening the balcony door.  You can’t force the butterfly out, even though you’re helping, it had to find the path out on its own.

Why do I bring this up?  Am I slowly going insane after spending the day with Dive Into Python (rec’d)?  Perhaps. But I have a point.

Let’s take the common journalist, yearing to know more about data-driven apps.  (I can’t be the only one, I just can’t!)  I search for the answers, voraciously read, alternate between laying still while observing the space and wandering around the perimeter, feeling it out, trying to dip my toe in the water.  I jump into the pool, head-first, realize it’s not working.  Can’t do it on my own.  Many people who’ve already made the journey try to help.  But they just can’t just give me the knowledge, can’t just take me to my goal, can’t just make it happen.  They must lead me there, give me the same resources they used.  Recommend the books, the sites. But in the end, I’ve got to find my own way out of the house, the prison of not knowing enough coding basics to begin.  Pushes in the right direction, guiding me away from those false starts, this is essential.

I’d just like to take a moment to thank the experts, who guide me away from the false starts, who don’t give up when I keep turning the wrong way.  In particular, in terms of the programming skills I’m learning, it’s Ben Welsh (who I happen to have been working most closely with), who exercises that kind of patience.  Who never tells me not to fly into that closed window, because while it was closed for him, I might discover a way to get out.  Of course, I don’t, and he’s no less interested in helping me get back on course. Thanks!

Still a long way to go.  So, what’s changed?  Now, I’ve gotten outside.  I made my first app.  When someone asks me what steps make up a project, how long it’ll take, I can give a legitimate answer, or know how to find one.

I still remember wondering if I could ever build an application.  And Derek said to me, “There’s only one way to find out.”  Derek, who I used to bug on a daily basis about this stuff.  Derek, who I haven’t asked a Python/Django question of since March.  I’m the LAT’s problem now!

Well, as Derek said, find out we did.  Time to push it further, I say.

There’s a whole world to explore now that I’ve escaped being stuck inside.  LAT folks, prepare yourself, the questions you’ve seen so far are only the beginning.

Explore other posts:

• September 6, 2010 -- What’s regex again? Why should journos care?
• March 25, 2010 -- Self-teaching data and programming skills
• April 5, 2009 -- State of Healthcare Journalism
• February 9, 2010 -- Repetition, repetition: The power of multiples
• February 13, 2010 -- Data Delver: David Donald, Center for Public Integrity
• January 31, 2010 -- Data Delver: Matt Waite, St. Petersburg Times

I’ll just put it this way.  Andy, you’ve been an inspiration.  Watching your work while I was a student at Medill, and how much you enjoyed it, I knew some day I could do anything, if I could just set my mind to it, and find supportive mentors.

It’s a parallel thing.  Andy gets Matt Waite and Jeremy Bowers at the Times of the Southeast (St. Pete), I get Ben Welsh and Ken Schwencke at the Times of the Southwest (LA).  Match good mentors with journalistic enthusiasm and obsession, and you’ll get somewhere!

We both get to bring passion, skill and journalistic knowhow to the table.  We bug the people with the tech knowledge until we have a moment like this.   Maybe someday I’ll report in the field and code like Andy does.  But for now, my reporting consists of investigating the nuances of the still-large ship that is the LA Times, and looking at how it can be even better.  And at this point in time, I wouldn’t change it for the world.

It seems appropriate to post this interview with Andy now (Yes, I’m making excuses for delaying this for months and months….).  I chatted with him in March, just after the launch of his first Django app – MyLawmaker.  And I just launched my first one about two weeks ago.

I started these Data Delver interviews knowing no one in the field other than Derek Willis.  (And if you only got to know one person, he’s as good as it gets.)  And now, I feel like I know so many more.  And for some reason, I get to be a part of their ranks each day.  It’s a privilege, an honor, and an adrenaline rush like no other.

I’ll let Andy take it away in his own words now.

This transcript of my interview with Boyle is a part of my continuing series I’m calling “Data Delvers,” where I pass on transcripts, summaries, quotes and audio clips from conversations with journalists using technology to find, analyze and convey data-driven stories and/or projects to the modern audience.

Extended transcript

Why is having an understanding of data important?
When we have meetings to discuss story ideas with the group I work with we mainly focus on breaking news on the web.  When somebody says something, it’s really nice to be able to go, “Oh, I know how they keep those records so I know exactly how you can ask questions to find out how many total XXX has happened this year.”  It really helps to have a background, it gives you a chance to dig deeper and get more context.

Is St. Pete working to get other reporters to get more up to speed on this?
I think there’s quite a few reporters who do have this type of skill or do have the basics.  They can use Excel; they can use Microsoft Access.  Actually, there’s a reporter who did a really awesome story on leaky underground storage tanks and where they are located.  My compadre, Darla Cameron, does a lot of GIS stuff, so she’s also a data nerd, like me. She was able to help him with that. A lot of people use databases on a pretty average basis and have some CAR training, but not as much huge stuff like the Wetlands project that the St. Pete Times did with Matt Waite and Craig Pittman a few years ago.  But things on a smaller scale are happening.

Going back to the MyLawmaker project, what was the genesis of that?
The genesis is that on Monday the state legislature starts so we print this thing every year in our Perspectives section which runs every Sunday.  We print opinion pieces and stuff like that in a section called ‘For a better Florida’.  One of our politics editors, Amy Hollyfield,  had sent an email out to one of the higher-ups  saying that there’s this project from the New York Times called Represent and another one at Oregon Live –  Your Government, where you type in your address and it shows you your state lawmakers, congressmen, city lawmakers, etc.  She asked if it would be possible for us to set up something to help people find their state representatives and state senators from their address?  This somehow made it to me and I go, “Yeah, yeah, that can be done; it’s possible.”  At that point I had no clue in my mind of how we were going to do that, but I knew it was possible because obviously someone else could do it. So we had the shape files; Darla already had the information.  Somehow we could write a program that would geocode your address and would ask what you wanted to see, and it would print out what you wanted.

So that was basically last Thursday and it is now Friday and we are ready to launch.  Thursday, about 3:30 in the afternoon, it was like, “Hey guys, do you think you can do this?”  I was taught a long time ago that if you think you can, try it. This is something that I really wanted to do.  It was an opportunity to try this stuff   I’ve been working on.  I’ve been working on some Django and Python with Matt Waite and Jeremy Bowers, so it was nice to spearhead a project and have ownership on something and work with a group of awesome people like Darla and Lee.  I’m really jazzed.

So how did you start getting into Django…just by being around Matt and Jeremy?
Yeah, that’s totally it.  He’ll [Matt Waite] browbeat you into believing what he believes.  When I went to the Indianapolis NICAR conference he had a thing, a bootcamp, for three or four of the days on frameworks, so that was Django and the basics of it.  And I remember when he showed it,  I thought, “Man, that’s way easier than making hundreds of  individual web pages and then having to edit the HTML in each one. “ I remember being a kid and having an AOL members’ web page and how horrible it was to have to update every single HTML file and I thought “Wow!  This is something that automatically creates this stuff.   That is sweet.   I need to learn this.” And that was in March of last year.

And then after that it was just me attempting to learn stuff and breaking everything and being really afraid that I’d destroy my computer and not becoming afraid of the terminal. It was a very long process.  There were a couple of projects over the summer that I worked on.  One was FCAT, which is an aptitude test given to students in public schools in Florida. We were able to make a searchable database for that.  I wrote the models on that, and then they did the rest of the heavy lifting.  I guess that was the first project I had any sort of help with.  Then we later had a project for high school sports, called Home Team, which is totally awesome.  I was able to see the inner workings  and it was really cool to see the process of how they were developing it and how it was being set up.  I wanted to build something, so when the opportunity came along for MyLawmaker, I jumped at the chance to do it.

So what did you end up using for the geocoding?
We used Google.    There’s a limit of 2,500 times per IP in a 24 hour period which is an issue if you hope to get a lot of hits on  your website.   So what we do is we actually pass it off to JavaScript on the client side, so the server’s IP address comes from the user’s computer. Not that we expect 2,500 hits a day, but we have no clue as to how many hits it will get.   But we thought it’d be nice just in case.  We don’t want people trying to use it and it’s broken.

Have you had requests from the community for anything like this?  It doesn’t have to be specifically MyLawmaker, but just more interactive stuff?
I think a lot of people really like it.  When our FCAT project launched in the summer, it got a ton of use.   It still kind of does.  A lot of those projects that are usually attached to stories initially get a lot of hits.  With a project like this once we told some of our colleagues about it, they were like  “Wow, that’s a great idea.” With the state senate website, you can only search by zip code.   Then it will tell you the districts that are in that zip code and you have to click on that and see if you are located on a little map of the district, so ours is actually a little better than part of the state legislature’s.  But I guess that’s the goal.  We want to make sure that people can find the information and find whom to call if they have an issue.   A lot of people were quite surprised…they didn’t believe who their state legislators were.  Said, “That can’t be true.”  But it was, and they wouldn’t have known otherwise.

Why do you see this type of work as important?
It’s interactive.  When you pick up a newspaper, you read a story and it kind of ends there.  What’s really cool about this is it helps you find out broader information.  You can go searching a given database online and become more aware of your community. That’s part of what we do, as journalists, and as news organizations, we try to inform the public.  To do it in a way that’s automated, that doesn’t require our constant supervision or our constant writing of stories, helps because it frees up time for us to do other stuff.  It still gives people information and more context when it comes to stories.  I believe that a well-informed populace is much better than an ill-informed populace.  It’s also really cool and lots of fun to do.

Do you enjoy living in both worlds – the reporting and the developing aspects?  What are the advantages and disadvantages?
Yes, I do.  I guess time is a disadvantage in everything we do.  Part of it is because of the reporting, I can come up with projects that we can do.  I think if I was only a code monkey and I was never out on the streets, I wouldn’t find out what data is available or what data we can build on our own. It also helps you keep track of the news.  Like this is being built in response to the fact that the state legislature is meeting on Monday to start a new session. If I was just a reporter, I wouldn’t be aware of different ways to think and inform the public.  And if I was just a developer, I would be a little blind to some of the opportunities that there are to inform the public, and make cool stuff.

Any other advice?
Something I wish I’d been told when I was younger is failure happens, especially with this sort of stuff, so you really need to get used to it, and we all fail.  Your failure is a failure, unless you learn.  Then, your failure becomes a win.  If you’re always trying to learn stuff, as a journalist, if you’re always working to develop different skill sets, whether it’s Web development, normal computer-assisted reporting, GIS, narrative storytelling, it all helps you, it all helps the other things.  Whatever new skill you learn in journalism will add to your big palette of rocking.

Would you recommend all or more reporters get into the coding side of things?
It doesn’t hurt.  It doesn’t hurt to understand the basics of data.  If you’re a city hall reporter, it helps to know basic Excel, it helps to know Access. There’s a ton of cool stuff you can do because of it.  If you are a feature writer, and you write longer narratives, and stuff like that, you can still find stories through databases, you can still find extra people to interview through those methods.  It helps in every aspect I think, just to have a little bit.  Whereas I have made the intense plunge into being a total nerd when it comes to this stuff, if that’s what you want to do, that’s what you want to do.  I don’t think that should be a requirement, but I think you should have at least the bare bones basics of what’s going on, because knowledge is power, and knowing is half the battle.

Related posts you might enjoy:

• April 11, 2010 -- Data Delver: Paul Monies, The Oklahoman
• April 5, 2010 -- Women with coding skills are no Passover miracle
• April 5, 2010 -- Data Delver: Phil Meyer
• March 28, 2010 -- Data Delver: Mark Schaver, Louisville Courier
• March 8, 2010 -- Data Delver: Anthony DeBarros, USA Today
• March 8, 2010 -- Data Delver: Jennifer LaFleur, ProPublica

One of the areas in journalism most ripe for data work, as I see it, is enterprise stories.  At papers with small CAR staffs, there’s often a serious strain on the time of CAR reporters and editors seeking to provide context and fodder for long-term projects, often investigative, and enhance shorter one-off daily pieces, often breaking news.  Spend too much time on one area, you’re neglecting the other.  At the Seattle Times, one editor is called the Data Enterprise Editor, and her time is largely based in project work, that breaks out of the daily story routine.  She works to include interactivity on the website, from searchable databases to Google maps.  And she works with a group of reporters focusing on suburban areas, that are too often undercovered.

It’s her job to organize and foster collaboration across the newsroom, to create the best data-based stories and projects possible.  The woman who holds this title?  The Seattle Times’ Cheryl Phillips.

This interview with Phillips is a part of my continuing series I’m calling “Data Delvers,” where I pass on summaries, quotes, transcripts and audio clips from conversations with journalists using technology to find, analyze and convey data-driven stories and/or projects to the modern audience.

Bolding within Phillips’ answers denote some of the quotes I found most interesting.

Please describe your role as Data Enterprise Editor.

The data enterprise work is basically me and a small team, two other people. We focus on computer-assisted reporting, and then try to take that CAR work a step further and do some interactivity online with it, like a searchable database, whether it’s a Flash piece, interactive map, or database. The stories vary, some are longer projects, some are, “Let’s just create this Google map for a feature piece.” That has nothing to do with investigative journalism, but it creates a more interactive environment for the paper. That takes a big chunk of my time. The other thing that takes an almost equal amount of time would be that I’m an editor for a team of three reporters that cover suburban communities. We try to make them pretty mobile, so they’re out often, but the idea is that they do enterprise. It’s not like a daily suburban story. It’s like, outside the city, what’s going on, what are the issues of note. One of my reporters is doing a big piece about all these revised floodmaps that are coming out, and what the impact is going to be on these rural communities.

When did you start?

I’ve been doing this job a year and a half, since Sept. ’08.

How long has the paper been doing suburban reporting?

We used to have an East Side bureau, but then, when we had cutbacks, we eliminated that bureau. We also had another bureau covering the suburbs to the north. So, this is an effort to make sure that we don’t forget about those suburban communities which still want to be covered, but we can’t cover every city council meeting, so we cover important news that matters. We can give a sense of place for our readers by telling these stories.

Can you tell me about your career path to the Seattle Times?

I’ve been all over the place. I started in the ’80s back in Texas, then I went to Montana, which is my home state, and I worked for a small Gannett paper there [Great Falls Tribune]. I was on loan to USA Today for about half a year. Got back in ‘95. Then I went to the Detroit News and was a CAR projects editor there. I went from there to USA Today, and was a database editor. You probably heard the story about how I left USA Today. I was fired for touching a piece of artwork, along with two other people. I did a project for Dateline on drunken driving, and then I was hired by the Seattle Times.

Can you pinpoint any marked differences between broadcast investigative work for Dateline vs. print reporting?

It was stunning to me, the difference. I hadn’t truly recognized it. I did a lot of work for this Dateline project special. The editor from Dateline did a lot of work, too. They did a lot of filming focusing on one woman who was hit by a drunken driver, and her recovery. I spent months analyzing data from four different suburban metropolitan areas, looking at sentences for manslaughter where someone had also received a DUI for vehicular manslaughter when they were sober. The result we found was that if you also had a DUI, you got the lighter sentence on average, so you got penalized more for being sober than you did for being drunk, which is kind of stunning, and it boiled down to two sentences on air. I could have written an entire newspaper article about that, but it was important for them. They were willing to spend the time to invest in my work, but it was just a piece of this visual narrative, so it was very different.

What is it that drew you to CAR in the first place?

I just felt like there were stories that were going untold, that you could tell if you understood what was happening in bigger swaths of information. You could use these technologies and tools and become a better reporter. One of my very first projects was really simple, it wasn’t a big chunk of data. I used a Lotus spreadsheet to analyze the partnership agreement for the Texas Rangers, back when George W. Bush was one of the owners of the team, to figure out how much he would get if he sold the team, and how much everyone else would get. It was a formula, so I had to use a spreadsheet to do it. It was the first time I’d been exposed to that. I had a CPA friend who helped me with it. And I was like “Oh, wow, I can actually do this,” and it was kind of amazing. It opened a new world for me and it kind of went on from there.

What’s your role in IRE?

I’m chairman of the board at IRE, and I’m a past president.

What’s fueled your involvement in that organization?

I wouldn’t have learned anything had it not been for IRE. I started going to conferences in the mid-‘90s, and I would have gone earlier if I had known about the organization. My first conference was when I was in Montana, and I was on loan to USA Today, and my paper from Montana didn’t really have the money to send me to a conference, and the other database editors at USA Today basically said, “Well, yeah, I’ll share a room with you. My point is, I had no money and a whole slew of people took care of me, from sharing rooms to not letting me buy meals, and it was really stunning. So, I ended up rooming with someone from USA Today, and literally, no one would let me buy anything . It was just great, and I learned a ton, and I saw what was possible.

I went back to my small Montana paper and started to incorporate that into my work, and turned out some pretty good stories that I couldn’t have done otherwise. So, my involvement in IRE has come because I wanted to make sure that other people could have that same experience, and produce some great journalism based on what they learned.

As far as the future of CAR, do you see this as a skill more reporters will be required to have? Do you see it more as the role of a CAR specialist?

There will always be a role for a CAR specialist, now more than ever, really. I hope more reporters will gain basic computer-assisted reporting skills, that they will all know how to use a spreadsheet, they will know how to calculate percentage change, basic stuff, especially as we try to develop searchable applications. But when it comes to dealing with really complex data sets, you’ve got to spend some real time in that world. Because, if you don’t use these skills often, then you lose that. I’m an example of that. It’s been a few years since I even used ArcView mapping programs, I’m pretty slow and clunky now and it’s because I haven’t had a need to do that, to use that map expertise. So I go to my CAR specialist, and I have him do it, because unless I’m going to be doing it all the time, I need him to make sure it doesn’t get screwed up.

I have reporters who don’t do it all the time, they’re not CAR specialists, but they do have computer-assisted reporting skills. I think the balance is that they do the work, which is great, and I want them to keep doing that work, but it gets run by a specialist or by me, to make sure that somebody checks that analysis, just to be doubly sure. Anyway, we always check, but it’s especially important when it’s someone who doesn’t use high-level CAR on an everyday basis.

How do you decide which projects are worthy of interactive and/or searchable database treatment?

I think it depends on a couple of things. It’s similar, I think, to how the graphics department thinks about the graphics that they do for the paper. Do they aid the reader in a better or deeper understanding of the story? That’s one piece of it. Another piece of it is: Would the reader be interested in more information? On the Web site, in a text file or just in the paper? A lot of people are often interested in diving down into the numbers, that’s something which I think can help with greater transparency. If it’s one where you think someone would be interested in those numbers, or it would tell them something useful, create a database for it. If it’s not, if you don’t think people are going to go to it, if they’re not going to be interested, or if it doesn’t illuminate in some way, then we don’t do it.

How is this work broken down at the Seattle Times?

Another part of the Data Enterprise piece of my job is that I work across departments. It may be that the business editor is having a reporter working on a story about home values. So, she’ll come to me and say, “Hey, do this with us. We can create something online,” and she’ll say something about what they’re trying to achieve. Then, I’ll go to the online department, and I’ll say “What resources do we have if we create this searchable interface? Can you do some design with it, or give it some extra treatment?” It’s sort of a collaborative conversation. Also, depending on the level of time involved, I think about if it would take our CAR specialist, or me, x amount of time, because we also have this project coming. It’s really a mix. We’re very collaborative, we talk about everything.

Do you try to bring all the departments in at the outset of a project?

Yes. Pretty much. In ’09, we did an interactive Flash map, it was an environmental graphic. We won the James V. Risser Prize for environmental journalism, Justin Mayo was the CAR specialist on it. We did this really nice thing that took quite a bit of time, it was very complex. We had brought in everyone from the beginning. The photographer was there, two reporters, Justin, and another reporter. And we had the Flash guy involved from the very beginning. We took a look at logging permits, and kind of showed how there was flood damage in particular areas that had been logged heavily. We ended up using these maps, we were creating these maps for our reporting use, to say, “Oh, look, here’s this hazard zone.” We found ourselves using it so much as a reporting tool that it dawned on us, in part because we had the Flash guy involved from the beginning, that we really needed to put this online. If we use it to help us understand a pretty complex subject, then it really would help the reader.

Speaking of readers, what feedback have you gotten from the community to this sort of work?

I don’t get a lot of phone calls, or things like that. They respond to our stories saying, “Thanks for getting this information,” or “Gee, I’m really glad I can look this up.” That’s really about the extent of it. I would say more feedback comes in the way of traffic, and our searchable databases get some pretty good traffic. Even something simple. We did election results, where we created a quick searchable database for the elections, and that got an incredible amount of traffic. You could go to the various counties, and see what those counties were doing, and people seemed to like having it all brought together in one spot.

Related posts you might enjoy:

• January 11, 2010 -- Importance of combining data analysis with context (reflections on readings from week two)
• April 11, 2010 -- Data Delver: Paul Monies, The Oklahoman
• March 29, 2010 -- Using Javascript for interactive Google charts
• March 24, 2010 -- Bringing data journalism into curricula
• March 18, 2010 -- My next move: LA Times!
• February 21, 2010 -- Is a flat text file or a database right for an app?

Added additional female programmer to my list below, thanks to a tip in the comments from the ever-present-in-my-life Derek Willis *waves*.  Do any of you know others I should add to the list?

Also fixed minor typos and omitted words, and added a few links I meant to include.  Omissions resulting from blogging at 3:30 am.  Painted blue skies inside IRE hotel messed up my sleep pattern more than usual — although it’s pretty messed up to begin with.

If we just met in the last few days at the awesome Investigative Reporters and Editors conference, welcome! (And if you’ve been following for months, weeks, days or hours — thanks for putting up with me!)

I had a marvelous time this week meeting new people, learning new things, and even teaching a little bit. It’s so invigorating to see how much great work is being done.  The minds of some of the greatest folks in investigative journalism are your classroom.  I’m delighted and honored that once in a while these same brilliant minds ask me about easy tools to help visualize data sets (*cough* Many Eyes, Google Fusion Tables *cough*).

I got some new ideas for my LAT work, and posts both here and at poynter.org. Although I do have to admit, I’m getting antsy having stepped away from coding for three whole days already. May be time to pick up a project at the airport while traveling.  Funny that about a year ago, I couldn’t have written a line of Python.

Now, some quick housekeeping notes. I will be occupied with graduation activities most of this coming week, although I may write a bit.

I am working on a couple of posts:

1. Bit off more than I could chew during my IRE lightning talk — so I’ll write more on what you can do (and how you can do it) to make your databases more “discoverable.”  That means making it easier for people to find their own stories.
2. A walkthrough of the static Google Chart API, which some have asked for. I’ve been messing with it a lot at work, colleague Ben Welsh has a great post on this here
3. 2 leftover Data Delvers I STILL haven’t posted (sorry, Cheryl Phillips and Andy Boyle — this has been going on for too many months…)  That’s where I post interviews with CAR specialists, data visualizers, and other data journalists in the field.
4. Summary posts from some IRE workshops.  Partially on what was covered, but more on WHY it’s important.
5. Let me know what you want covered.  Only learned what I have thanks to so many IRE/NICAR folks.  I’m eager to pay it forward, and I love writing about anything data-, programming- or journalism-related.  Curious how something works?  Ready for a rant on a topic?  Lemme know.

In the meantime, especially for the benefit of new readers and folks asking how to get started on programming-journalism, I’d like to replug my posts on what belongs in a data journalism curriculum, and how to go about teaching yourself data journalism.  Also, look just below this post on the main page for my thoughts on taking charge of your own journalism education.

Also, for those asking about my favorite resources, I highly recommend all the blogs I list in the right rail, although I have other favorites yet to be added.

In the past few days, a few people asked what I dub “the gender question.”  IRE continues to be dominated by white males, just as the programming world, and programmer-journalist world, is.  Yes, I’m one of two three female programmer-journalists employed at newspapers that I know of.  UPDATED: (The others is are Jacqui Maher of the New York Times, who I’ve chatted with, and Jackie Kazil of the Washington Post, who Derek Willis just mentioned in the comments.)  There are others at some of the investigative not-for-profits springing up, such as California Watch.  I don’t ignore the disparity, I don’t dwell on it.  If you want more detail, I’ll discuss it, but please read this post first, which summarizes my thoughts.

I’ll also take this opportunity to mention once again that I’m writing about data journalism for Poynter.org, when I have the chance.  Thankfully, my editor exercises a great deal of patience with my less-than-stellar adherance to deadlines (sorry!) I’ve written three pieces so far:

1. Miami Herald Marks Anniversary of Mariel Boatlift with Database of Passengers, Vessels
2. Dig into Archives and Memories to Present Primary Data on Historic Anniversaries
3. How to Scrape Websites for Data without Programming Skills

Thanks for your patience with my lagging activity. Please bear with me, and I’ll get even more active in the coming weeks, I promise.  The jetsetting tends to drag me away.

Explore other posts:

• February 13, 2010 -- Data Delver: Mo Tamman, Wall Street Journal
• January 31, 2010 -- Data Delver: Matt Waite, St. Petersburg Times
• August 17, 2010 -- Fighting for my life: The largest battle I ever won
• July 11, 2010 -- Data Delver: Cheryl Phillips, Seattle Times
• March 5, 2010 -- Why we do what we do: Pursuing the sparkle
• February 1, 2009 -- Corrections

I’m looking forward to it, yet it seems sort of surreal.  Graduation marks the end of one chapter, the beginning of another.  But I started the new chapter already.

As much as I love connecting with journos, I’ve discovered my underestimation of the year: I’ve got more to learn than I ever could have imagined.  People have said it in countless Web discussions.  Find a project, do it, pick up skills along the way.  So, I’m concentrating on that like I’m cramming for finals, but with a never-ending study period.  Producing an app in a day uses some skills, doing it right over the course of months is a totally different ballgame.

This is where I am now.  But that chat topic begs the question: Was there a point in going to Medill?  Did it mean more than the opportunity to walk across a stage in a purple gown two weeks from today?  Is it just some archaic tradition that has nothing to do with my new coding life?  To these questions, I want to shout at the top of my virtual lungs, “It was essential!  It mattered!  Without j-school, what I am doing would not be possible!”

It’s about much more than curricula

Don’t rely on the curriculum of your j-school.  Fine, Medill doesn’t teach coding, most j-schools don’t.  Maybe your school doesn’t teach this or that, doesn’t have the right specialization.  It doesn’t matter.  The most valuable lessons I learned from j-school didn’t happen in  a structured lecture hall.  They took place off the cuff, with colleagues while working on a story, with professors hounding them during their office hours.  J-school taught me story structure, technical skills, office politics, the philosophy veteran journos bring to the table.  I’ll say it again: We must apply our journalistic curiosity to learning about our craft.

It’s an approach I’ve taken to my work at the Times (Look, I’m all Cali-centric now, and don’t use “the Times” to mean NYT anymore — weird).  Even as I work on a project with the LA Times masthead at the top, it feels like school.  And that’s a good thing.  You couldn’t ask for better teachers.  Yes, so knowledgable, but also patient and kind, always available, and so, so, dedicated.  Whether it’s the data analyst who’s been at this for decades, or my fellow Web devs who’ve both been at the Times for less than 3 years, they have so much to offer.  Would I dare to not ask a question because no one assigned it?  Ha! Would you not ask a question at a press conference because no one told you to?  If you’re in this industry, or even if you just have one curious bone in your body, I hope not.

Life at the Times

So, what’s it like at the Times, for those curious?  I suppose “the best working environment I’ve been fortunate enough to encounter” is not a sufficient answer.  And I’ll add my continual disclaimer.  Should all journalists be programmers? No.  We each have our specialties.  I do wish all journalists knew that this work exists, and understood the basic building blocks of what coding makes possible, and how long it takes.  That being said, I don’t believe every journalist needs to embark on this path, and if you do, it is a career shift.  It’s one I’m frankly in love with, but not everyone needs to/should go this insane.

In the end, my day-to-day life isn’t all that different from how Medill functioned.  Bring your own ideas to the table, incorporate the feedback of others.  Communicate what you’re working on to others.  Instead of working with client papers, keep the rest of the team and the editors up to date.  But mostly, frankly, just get stuff done.  The “Los Angeles Times” may sound glamorous, but that’s not why I’m there.  (And no news organization is safe in this day in age.)  In the end, I walk in every day, and type code on a computer, just like I did when I was practicing.

Each day, I improve a tiny bit (one hopes), and gain a deeper understanding about how far I’ve yet to go.  And once the myriad of files cover up the desktop background image that says, “Los Angeles Times,” I almost forget where I’m working, but always remember why I’m working.  Providing information to the public, taking full advantage of the power of the Internet.  Embrace the future.  Inform the readers.  It’s a mantra.  It is the combination of journalism and computer science, and both tool sets inform each other.  If you just want to code, you can make a lot more money, and have a lot more job opportunities elsewhere.  If you want to write, same thing (although less with the money part.)  But that’s not why I started down this path.

I’m part of a tight-knit group that already feels like a family.  I know many people search their whole lives for that.  And when we work, we mean business.  After all, these are the people who brought us California’s War Dead, and Mapping LA and Homicide Report.  It is an honor to be working alongside them.

So, our team sits, fairly quietly, and you hear some talking, but more of the clicking of keyboards, and the occasional muttering, and the even more occasional cheering when something actually works (okay, that last one’s me).  And while I am fortunate enough to get help to get conceptually unstuck — often when there’s a bug, it’s up to you to fix it.  After all, it’s your application.  Just like in Medill, no one can write your story, no one can tell you what you did to make the CMS give you what was known as “the dreaded Alt error.”  Work with others, but be self-sufficient enough to build products on your own.  (If you’re wondering, no, nothing’s been launched yet, but you’ll see what gets done, all in time.  I’ll keep the blog updated on that score.)

But before you can do this kind of work, and push beyond the curriculum, you must be acutely aware of the basics.  And that’s where j-school comes in.  Teach me AP style, teach me how to write a lede, teach me all that journalism has taught us for the past decades and centuries.  Tell me your experiences, help me form my own experiences, because I’d rather get that knowledge sooner than later.  We  can only move forward once we understand what history has taught us.

J-school provides building blocks

We each make our own experience from what we learn in j-school.  I have colleagues from my cohort who are anchors, TV reporters, radio reporters, social media producers, Web producers and much more.  Our platforms range from print to magazine to online to broadcast (TV and radio).  We all took many of the same classes, but made the overall experience our own.

So, I thank Medill, with all my heart, for all the lessons, all the grounding, all the exposure to new ideas that taught me just how little I know.  I thank Medill for the essential building blocks. I thank Medill for being a practical program, giving me a playground to try some cool new things out.  I’ve still got that playground, it’s just bigger now.  I stumble every day. But if it weren’t for j-school, and specifically Medill, I’d be stumbling a whole lot more.

I use what I learned in j-school every day, both what was in the curriculum, and what wasn’t in the curriculum.  I accept my Medill professors as my teachers, I accept the NICARians as my teachers, I accept my LAT colleagues as my teachers.  And once in a while, my own experiences or what others have told me allow me to pass on some of my knowledge.

The learning never ends. A curriculum can speed it up, but if you don’t learn how to self-teach, someone else will.  It’s scary and invigorating all at the same time.  That’s a big reason why I spend my life this way.  I feel lucky to have found what drives me, and my graduation wish for everyone is to be able to apply your curiosity to discover what drives you.  Oh, and also, the realistic caveat — I hope the job market recognizes the importance of our passions so that we all find a way to make a living doing it.

Related posts you might enjoy:

• April 5, 2010 -- Women with coding skills are no Passover miracle
• March 24, 2010 -- Bringing data journalism into curricula
• March 8, 2010 -- Piece de resistance: Data viz wrapup
• March 5, 2010 -- Why we do what we do: Pursuing the sparkle
• March 2, 2010 -- Guest Post: Integrating data with our journalism
• February 22, 2010 -- David Carr at Medill

I just needed something to do with my ever abundant free time, obviously.

Alright, since we know that’s not true, the real reason is that it will help spread the data journalism message.  There are a lot of skills to learn, and a lot of questions to be answered.  The more of us intelligently exploring these options, the better off we all are.

Plus, it’s fun, and a way to keep writing even as I spend my working days coding.

If you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to be explored, please get at me.

Explore other posts:

• January 31, 2010 -- Data Delver: Tyson Evans, NY Times Interface Engineer
• May 3, 2010 -- Note to self: Real world journo-coding lessons
• February 15, 2010 -- Data Delver: Lisa Pickoff-White, California Watch
• January 4, 2010 -- Reflections on Visualization Theory (Data viz readings, week 1)
• January 25, 2009 -- Analysis of Interactive Features In WaPo’s Inauguration Timeline Map
• January 29, 2010 -- Data Delver: Perry Swanson, The Gazette

Part of it has been the chaos of moving, spending time exploring LA.  The other part is that I’m finally walking the walk every day.  I stepped out of the Medill bubble, valiantly tried  to explain to my friends and family what I’m doing out in California. “We’ll look for your articles!”  “Do you write feature stories?”  Me: “I tell stories through data.  No?  I do geeky stuff to create interactive apps for news.  No?  Ever used Excel?  Yeah, it’s computer-y stuff.”

I moved halfway across the country.  I oohed and aahed at the palm trees outside my window every morning, the giant building imprinted with the LA Times logo that looms above me as I emerge from the subway every day.  I got over how impressive the trees and the building are, and saw them as normal landmarks.  And I was reminded of why I do what I do, how there is so much more to be done, and the importance of striking a personal/professional balance (and believe me, I don’t do well with balance usually.)  The LAT is an experience that’s even better than I imagined it would be, and I’m just two weeks in.  But there’s a lot to accomplish, in terms of what I produce, and what I get out of the experience.  Every second brings new knowledge!

Here are some things I want to make sure I remember as the weeks go on.  This is the moment, and Toto, we’re not in Evanston sitting in Fisk Hall anymore.

1. The more you learn, the more you realize just how much you don’t understand.  “I get that models hook up to views, and are displayed through templates.  I conquered Django!”  That was me a few weeks ago.  How naive!  There’s always new problems to solve, and big concepts to wrap your head around.  Not impossible, but your dedication and concentration is required.

1.5. People with these skills are really, really needed. The more you know, the more you can get done. The sooner that happens, the more work you can do.

2. Faster isn’t always better.  I keep finding myself talking about how fast I can do something.  I think it’s the deadline mentality that’s been imprinted into my brain.  Sure, that’s needed.  But what’s more important is that the app tells a useful story, and even more fundamentally, that it actually works, and is able to be used.  Slow it down enough to make quality products we can be proud of.

3. Along the same lines, pushing yourself on the new skills until you drop won’t help.  I’ve been putting in long hours, coming home and reading up on Django at night.  I tell myself, “If I can just figure this out, then I’ll be at the level everyone else is.”  But it never ends.  The learning process is never done.  And giving up too much personal time isn’t going to fix it.  Work hard, play hard.  Step away briefly, come back with renewed energy.

4. Rich Gordon constantly told me to pursue the opportunity where you learn the most.  Or as Matt Mansfield put it, “Find the people doing what you want to do.”  Either way, both pieces of advice land me where I am.  If I knew everything, I’d be bored.  Teaching yourself is valid, and essential, but it goes faster when you’re around others who know more about what they’re doing.  Get 80 percent of the way there yourself, get someone to explain the problem you can’t solve, move on.  Repeat as needed.

5. Rejoice in your successes.  Not getting something can be frustrating beyond all belief, but part of what keeps me going is figuring out some neat little trick to make a feature work.  And there’s nothing quite like the elation when something goes right.

6. Don’t get bogged down in the trees.  One of the areas I’m seeking to improve is that I’ve gotten so caught up in, “Why is my database running so slow? How do I display my CSV in a view?” that I forget about adding new features, just thinking about when I’ll be done.  Then you just become a machine cranking out code.  Journalist-programmers can, and should, do more.  We must utilize our creativity.  I’ve overlooked the importance of using a system to track bugs to fix/features to add.  Getting lost in minutiae hasn’t been good for my mental health, and it’s not good for my apps.

7. There are always new features to add.  If you think an app is done, you’re not looking hard enough.

8. Don’t get intimidated by what you don’t know. No matter your level, you have valuable ideas you can, and must, contribute.

9. If you think it’s hard to actually do something, sometimes it can be even more difficult to articulate it.  I’ve had moments, where I’m certain I look like an idiot, trying to explain a problem to my new colleagues, and I just get tongue-tied.  “If I call it a method, and it’s actually a class, I’ll look dumb.”  I’m lucky to work with colleagues who know much more than I, they tell me it’s okay to take my time as I struggle to explain the issue.  Thankfully, they are kind and patient.  Here’s my challenge: Give yourself permission to screw up.

10. Stay in touch with the community at large.  I’ve fallen out of touch with the data journalism, and general journalism, communities.  I’ve felt out of step.  Personally, I’m working on a side project that should rectify this (more on that in the coming days/weeks).  Staying in touch with, and learning from, others in similar situations, but at other institutions, gives much needed perspective.

11. Always remember why we do what we do.  Think of examples of great work, what got you excited about the potential for the combination of journalism and technology.  Remember the sparkle in your eyes.  Capture that sense of wonder and joy, and draw on it every day.

Related posts you might enjoy:

• March 25, 2010 -- Self-teaching data and programming skills
• February 22, 2010 -- “Demos, not memos”: My first Django app
• April 11, 2010 -- Data Delver: Paul Monies, The Oklahoman
• April 7, 2010 -- Columbia’s new joint MS: Good start, but no panacea
• April 5, 2010 -- Women with coding skills are no Passover miracle
• March 29, 2010 -- Using Javascript for interactive Google charts