Spreadsheets and Scraping
Spreadsheets and Scraping
About the Bundle
This bundle brings together the two main books on data journalism techniques: using spreadsheets to find stories; and learning key techniques to 'scrape' information from a range of sources into one easy-to-analyse spreadsheet.
About the Books
Finding Stories in Spreadsheets
Recipes for interviewing data - and getting answers
One spreadsheet can tell many stories. You just have to know the right questions to ask.
Based on a decade of training journalists and working with news organisations on data-driven stories, Finding Stories In Spreadsheets outlines the techniques for asking the right questions of data using tools like Excel and Google spreadsheets.
These aren't just questions about numbers: you'll find out how spreadsheet techniques can help you find the 'needle in the haystack' in text data. You'll learn how to clean up and modify your data so that you can ask it different questions, or get it ready for maps or charts, how to create new data from raw materials, and how to combine datasets to look for connections and trends.
With regular examples from journalism and real life data to work with, Finding Stories In Spreadsheets is *full* of those questions, in the language that spreadsheets understand.
Cover image concept by @CarolineBeavon. Illustration by Matt Buck at Drawnalism.
Scraping for Journalists (2nd edition)
How to grab information from hundreds of sources, put it in data you can interrogate - and still hit deadlines
Scraping - getting a computer to capture information from online sources - is one of the most powerful techniques for data-savvy journalists who want to get to the story first, or find exclusives that no one else has spotted. Faster than FOI and more detailed than advanced search techniques, scraping also allows you to grab data that organisations would rather you didn’t have - and put it into a form that allows you to get answers.
Scraping for Journalists introduces you to a range of scraping techniques - from very simple scraping techniques which are no more complicated than a spreadsheet formula, to more complex challenges such as scraping databases or hundreds of documents. At every stage you'll see results - but you'll also be building towards more ambitious and powerful tools.
You’ll be scraping within 5 minutes of reading the first chapter - but more importantly you'll be learning key principles and techniques for dealing with scraping problems.
Unlike general books about programming languages, everything in this book has a direct application for journalism, and each principle of programming is related to their application in scraping for newsgathering. And unlike standalone guides and blog posts that cover particular tools or techniques, this book aims to give you skills that you can apply in new situations and with new tools.
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