It might sound strange, but a lecture on Excel was exactly my cup of tea. Before starting my course, I spent a year working in telecoms, and spent a great deal of time finding new ways to manipulate data produced by our computer management system. I have been surprised at just how often journalism has reminded me of this job – constantly trying to get hold of people who don’t answer the phone, and the stress of constant deadlines – but never expected to be able to use the skills I developed on Excel again.
Our lecturer, Glyn Mottershead, talked about using Excel to get the answers you wanted from data sets, provided by the government or elsewhere – what he referred to as ‘interviewing data’. This may have sounded dull to others but the familiarity of it got me excited. It may sound evil, but while working in telecoms I came up with all sorts of ways of measuring just how much work everyone was doing – or how little. I could easily find out who was at fault for delays or just not doing their job properly. Imagine using this to hold public services to account, rather than just my under-achieving colleagues.
Glyn talked about how Computer Assisted Reporting, or CAR, like this may seem far from glamorous, but actually harks a return to the ‘caped crusader’
ideal of a journalist. Modern governments are well versed in the art of burying the information we want under an overwhelming amount of data. The passing of the Freedom of Information Act was supposed to usher in a new era of transparent government. At times, of course, the desire of government to keep this information secret can make this rather redundant. More often, however, they simply try and mislead by spinning statistics to their own advantage.
One of the many advantages of the digital age is that we no longer have to accept the spin. Instead, we can pick over the statistics ourselves, and use the data to source high-quality journalism. This form of investigative journalism may seem dreary, but the information it produces holds to account everyone meant to be working in our service. By doing so, we can stave off corruption – a far cry from lazy, agency-produced journalism. The use of APIs on news sites as large as the BBC, or the Guardian, opens up a great deal of information to the general public, and, inevitably, the blogosphere. This could lead to a great opening-up, the much talked about democratisation of journalism. If you can bear to sift through the spreadsheets.
