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E-book guides regional newsrooms in data journalism

A regional press journalist has written an e-book which encourages fellow newsrooms across the UK to carry out data journalism.

Claire Miller has self-published Getting Started with Data Journalism about her experiences of working for the Trinity Mirror’s WalesOnline website.

She has written the e-book to guide reporters in regional newsrooms about how to carry out data journalism, looking at techniques for finding, cleaning, analysing and visualising data.

Claire is now working the Trinity Mirror Data Unit, which provides data-based stories and graphics for the regional papers and their websites.

She said: “I feel there’s a view that you have to be the Guardian or a similar size operation in order to do data journalism and that it’s not something local and regional newspapers can do.

“All the examples in the book were used in a regional newspaper and most are adaptable to any size newsroom.

“Having started out with a small local patch and having weeks when it feels as if nothing is happening, being able to dig through the census, road accident data or the street-level crime figures for a local line would have been very useful.”

The e-book is available here.