Recent articles

How I visualized “Trump” mentions in hip-hop songs using D3

Hip-hop is often brutally honest about controversial issues in society – money, guns, drugs, sex and, of course, politics. I found a dataset collected and cleaned by FiveThirtyEight containing the […]

September 23, 2019September 23, 2019 Szu Yu Chen How to

How to download YouTube data in R using “tuber” and “purrr”

How to do basic text mining using Google Sheets

“Journalism is a craft, not a profession. It’s more art than science.”

Media continues to downplay Elizabeth Warren’s surging success in favor of a more comfortable narrative

How Colombia’s Datasketch wants to make data visualization easier for Latin American newsrooms

Measuring Google search interest for 2020 candidates following Fox News appearances

2020 Election Coverage Tracker

Media continues to downplay Elizabeth Warren’s surging success in favor of a more comfortable narrative

In much the same way Sarah Palin’s personal life was covered in the news more than her policies in 2008, and just as Hillary Clinton was routinely described as “shrill,” […]

September 12, 2019September 12, 2019 Alexa N. Gagosz Election Tracker

Measuring Google search interest for 2020 candidates following Fox News appearances

How Northeastern researchers are visualizing the presidential debates

Exploring 2020 demographic targeting and attack ads using Facebook’s Ad Library

Quantifying the Twitter attacks on Kamala Harris during and following the Democratic debates

Men are writing two-thirds of national stories about the 2020 presidential race

History repeats itself as women on the 2020 campaign trail receive more negative coverage than their male peers

Tutorials

How I visualized “Trump” mentions in hip-hop songs using D3

September 23, 2019September 23, 2019 Szu Yu Chen How to

How to download YouTube data in R using “tuber” and “purrr”

How to do basic text mining using Google Sheets

How to build margin of victory election maps with Datawrapper

How to make a longform narrative podcast without breaking the bank

How to build a GIF of satellite imagery in R

How to build a website with Blogdown in R

Behind the Scenes

How Colombia’s Datasketch wants to make data visualization easier for Latin American newsrooms

“We live in a world that is drowning in data and getting the stories may actually be harder than ever because the stories are hidden in plain sight in millions […]

August 27, 2019August 28, 2019 Aleszu Bajak Behind the scenes

How to grow your brand as a photojournalist and commercial photographer

How to build a multimedia sports feature for the New York Times

How the Wall Street Journal reported on “The Price of Climate”

Mixing storytelling and science: Behind the scenes at Hakai Magazine

How WGBH spent a year revealing how many women work in Massachusetts politics

Why Sharon Machlis wrote a book on R for journalists

Insights

Journalism schools need to focus on data, local news, social media and business models. Here are some that are.

May 16, 2019May 16, 2019 Alexander Frandsen Insights, Longform

Modeling networked media: Diagrams and graphics in John Wihbey’s The Social Fact

How to access APIs in R

News digests to the rescue?

Roundups

Six digital skills all new journalists should consider learning and a road map to unlocking them

July 15, 2019July 15, 2019 Daniel Hentz Roundups

Eight tools, datasets and resources from the Open Data Science Conference

Six tools showcased at NICAR 2019 that you should probably learn

NICAR: With the right tools, anyone can be a data journalist

Longform

Journalism schools need to focus on data, local news, social media and business models. Here are some that are.

It’s no secret that journalism is at a bit of a crossroads. With technology and media consumption habits changing constantly, the industry has been thrust into a state of near […]

May 16, 2019May 16, 2019 Alexander Frandsen Insights, Longform

The future of machine learning in journalism

Journalists improve coverage of memes with careful reporting

How the Palm Beach Post unearthed an opioid conspiracy with roots in Florida

Social media and news: The dilemma of our time

How The Washington Post designs its Snapchat stories

Making the interactive documentary “Oil to Die For”

What is Storybench?

Storybench takes an “under the hood” look at the latest in digital storytelling, from data visualization and investigative journalism to virtual reality and the digital humanities. In addition to in-depth interviews with industry practitioners, we offer hands-on tutorials that can be “downloaded” right into the classroom or newsroom.

Want to contribute to Storybench? Pitch us or join us for a graduate degree in the Media Innovation program at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.

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Storybench 2020 Election Coverage Tracker

The Storybench 2020 Election Coverage Tracker intends to keep tabs on the political coverage of the 2020 presidential election by covering media trends and using various data sources to explore media narratives.

Instead of keeping track of who’s ahead in the horse race, we’ll be turning our focus to those covering the horse race – the media outlets themselves and various proxies for public attention. Follow along here.

Best of Storybench

How the Wall Street Journal visualized 500+ conflicts of interest of the Trumps

Women on the 2020 campaign trail are being treated more negatively by the media

Getting started with data visualization in R using ggplot2

Understanding what makes a visualization memorable

Using French wine reviews to understand TF-IDF, a measure of how unique a word is to a document

Projects

Over the next two years we’ll be surveying the media’s coverage of the candidates and the issues. Follow along here.

The Reinventing Local TV News Project, from Northeastern’s School of Journalism, is analyzing the formats and practices of local news stations, and suggesting new ways of telling stories that can better engage diverse audiences. Read our inaugural post here.

The Climate Journalism Lab

The Climate Journalism Lab aims to examine and unpack the trends, tools and techniques employed by reporters and organizations covering climate change.

Join us at Northeastern!

Want to write for Storybench and probe the frontiers of media innovation? Apply for one of our graduate programs at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.

Rolling admissions, no GREs required and financial aid available. Email here.

Interviews

Pizza, Press & Politics is our weekly speaker series at Northeastern’s School of Journalism. Watch interviews with David Filipov, Mike Workman, Jenn Smith, Martha Durkee-Neuman, Susan Labandibar, John Ward, Marc Fortier, Carol Gregory, Ling-Mei Wong and Elana Gordon.

Collaborative, Open, Mobile

Over the last three years, Storybench has interviewed 72 data journalists, web developers, interactive graphics editors, and project managers from around the world to provide an “under the hood” look at the ingredients and best practices that go into today’s most compelling digital storytelling projects.

They boil down to three key areas of emphasis: 1) highly networked, team-based collaboration; 2) an ethos of open-source sharing, both within and between newsrooms; 3) and mobile-driven story presentation. Read our paper here.