Articles
Projects walkthroughs, tool teardowns, interviews, and more.
Articles tagged: COVID-19
-
COVID-19 story recipe: Analyze school enrollment changes in the districts you cover
By Vignesh Ramachandran and Daniel Willis
Posted onThe Stanford School Enrollment Project is a collaborative project that collects and normalizes school enrollment data from dozens of states, creating a dataset that didn’t exist before. Here’s how you can use the data to report on your community.
-
How California newsrooms teamed up to gather pandemic data
By Vignesh Ramachandran
Posted onData journalists from eight California newsrooms all benefit from a joint data-collection effort. Here’s how the collaboration works to free up more time for local journalism.
-
The conversations local newsrooms should be having about COVID-19 coverage
By Ryan Pitts
Posted onWe spent August and September in conversation with local journalists covering COVID-19, asking what they need most
-
COVID-19 story recipe: A dashboard with at-risk health indicators
By Dana Amihere, Alexandra Kanik, Lisa Pickoff-White, and Emily Zentner
Posted onWe teamed up to build a dashboard that shows two kinds of data: how widespread COVID–19 is in a community, alongside health indicators that show how some people are more at risk. We’ve open-sourced the project so you can use it too.
-
Tell us what you need to cover COVID-19
By Ryan Pitts
Posted onFor the next several months, OpenNews and Big Local News will work with local journalists to develop resources their newsrooms can use to better cover COVID-19. What should that support look like? We don’t know yet! But you can help us figure it out.
-
Don’t panic. Collaborate.
By Sarah Alvarez, Garance Burke, Matt Kiefer, and Michael Morisy
Posted onThe Covid Public Info project launched this spring, and has alreadycollected input from thousands of individual community members, filed hundreds of public records requests, and compared notes with dozens of journalists. Here are some highlights of what we’ve learned so far, and ways for you to get involved.
-
COVID-19 story recipe: Analyzing disparate impact based on race, poverty, and vulnerability in your area
By Hannah Recht
Posted onAs new COVID-19 hot spots popped up across the country and states began to release data by race and ethnicity, the team at Kaiser Health News reported on why the illness was striking Black, Hispanic, and Native Americans so intensely. Here’s how you can use the data to report on your community.
-
A comparison of four major COVID-19 data sources
By Irena Fischer-Hwang and Justin Mayo
Posted onA variety of datasets can help journalists track the spread of COVID-19. But which should you rely on? What’s the difference between them? What are the advantages and disadvantages to each? This guide will walk you through four major COVID-19 data sources: Johns Hopkins University, COVID Tracking Project, USAFacts, and The New York Times.
-
COVID-19 story recipe: Using AHA data to analyze hospital bed capacity
By Dilcia Mercedes
Posted onAmerican Hospital Association data can help you estimate the total number of beds your region could need to treat patients in a COVID-19 outbreak, and how many beds are likely to be available based on expected usage patterns. Here’s how you can use the data to report on your community.
-
COVID-19 story recipe: Identifying communities at risk from the pandemic and its economic fallout
By Jayme Fraser
Posted onUsing data from the CDC and the federal Health Resources & Services Administration, USA Today found counties that are both medically underserved and vulnerable to disasters—places where residents would be most at risk of losing access to health care during the COVID-19 outbreak. Here’s how you can use the data to report on your community.
-
How to make sense of all the COVID-19 datasets right now
By Sinduja Rangarajan
Posted onThere are a lot of COVID-19 datasets available, and it can be hard to know how they differ and which ones are most trustworthy. Here’s an overview of current datasets that journalists can rely on for stories.
-
COVID-19 story recipe: How to see what stocks members of Congress are dumping (or buying)
By Derek Willis
Posted onProPublica used the Senate’s financial disclosures to find that not long after Sen. Richard Burr offered a positive assessment in public of the country’s ability to handle the coronavirus, he sold hundreds of thousands of (and potentially up to $1.7 million) dollars in stocks, a highly unusual series of trades for him. Here’s how you can reproduce the story for your community.
-
COVID-19 story recipe: How to analyze your region’s hospital capacity
By Erin Petenko
Posted onVTDigger used Harvard Global Health Institute data to look into local hospitals’ capacity for handling an outbreak. Here’s how you can reproduce the story for your community.
-
COVID-19 story recipe: Analyzing nursing home data for infection-control problems
By Mike Stucka
Posted onA USA Today analysis found that three-quarters of nursing homes have been cited for infection-control problems in recent years. Here’s how you can reproduce the story for your community.
Event Roundup, Jan 21