Rachel Alexander
Rachel Alexander is the education reporter for Salem Reporter and the go-to data geek in the newsroom. She served on the Society of Professional Journalists Oregon board and the co-founder of Northwest News Nerds, a group dedicated to bringing low-cost workshops on data journalism to newsrooms around the Pacific Northwest.
Rachel’s work on Source
Articles by Rachel
-
We Started Our Own News Nerd Training, and You Can Too
Our Northwest News Nerds events mix hands-on technical training with space to talk about representation in the newsroom
Posted onSmall local news organizations are increasingly scaling back their budgets for professional development—that is, if they pay for journalists to travel to conferences at all. To work on filling the gap, Northwest News Nerds runs data journalism conferences open to women and non-binary journalists in the Northwest. We wanted something aimed squarely at beat reporters in small and medium-sized newsrooms to show that data wasn’t just for the big kids with big budgets. We also saw a need for more spaces for women, especially women of color, to speak candidly to each other about the challenges they face in newsrooms.
-
Diary of a Local Data Reporter
Telling the story of health care workers dying from opioid overdoses in Spokane, Washington
Posted onA deep dive into the ethics and process behind an investigation into overdoses in Spokane, Washington.