Majority of journalists consider stats and studies very important

Hello, hacks and hackers! John Wihbey, a journalism professor at Northeastern University, surveyed journalists for his new book The Social Fact: News and Knowledge in a Networked World, where he explores how "the structure of news, information, and knowledge and their flow through society are changing."

In this write-up in NiemanLab, he found that most journalists thought it was "very important" to be able to interpret statistics from sources and research studies. Unfortunately, most also reported that they were not very well equipped to do so.

Happening this week:

• New Orleans is drinking coffee and learning digital tools

Worth a read:

• To illustrate possibilities with R’s ggplot2 data viz package, Etoma Egot created a data viz dashboard using the Titanic dataset that includes characteristics from passengers, like age, sex, class and survival (Towards Data Science)
• Netflix’s TechBlog wrote a post about how they use Python and include links to several of the tools they employ (Netflix TechBlog)
• Andrea Wenzel, a Temple University professor, talked to 58 news consumers around the US to see how they deal with fake news online (NiemanLab)

Upcoming events:

Job openings:

Other opportunities: