DataMade have created a new tool to make it easier for journalists to add context to a data set. Here, AP Editor for Interactive Technology Troy Thibodeaux, who conceived and launched the tool called Geomancer, explains its potential:

"/> DataMade have created a new tool to make it easier for journalists to add context to a data set. Here, AP Editor for Interactive Technology Troy Thibodeaux, who conceived and launched the tool called Geomancer, explains its potential:

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Posted in Announcements

New AP tool helps journalists manage data

, by Erin Madigan White

The Associated Press’ data team and developers from civic technology company DataMade have created a new tool to make it easier for journalists to add context to a data set. Here, AP Editor for Interactive Technology Troy Thibodeaux, who conceived and launched the tool called Geomancer, explains its potential:

Why did AP create Geomancer?
AP has been a pioneer in data journalism and is committed to helping journalists use data more efficiently to find and tell important stories. We won a grant last year from the Knight Prototype Fund to build an open-source tool to help journalists make sense of data by mashing it up with other data sets about the same geographic location.

For reporters who work with data, it’s a common and laborious task to look up population or demographic data about the counties or ZIP codes represented in a given data set. Geomancer puts this data just a few clicks away. Our goal is to remove the drudgery from data so reporters can focus on finding the story.

How does it work?
Currently, the Geomancer prototype includes two data sources: the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey (via CensusReporter.org) and federal contracts from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s USASpending.org. It allows users to find data based on 10 geographic levels, including state, county and congressional district. There has already been some community interest in adding new data sets and geographical types.

The Geomancer team has created a working demo (geomancer.io) to show the tool’s potential and simple instructions that any newsroom can follow to install its own Geomancer and build its own warehouse of geography-based data sources. The Geomancer blog at geomancer.ap.org includes links to example data sets for getting started.

What’s next?
We’ll be working to help journalists inside and outside of the AP use Geomancer, and we are excited to see what stories it will help them produce. We’re looking forward to getting feedback from users and will be exploring ways to refine the tool, which is in a beta version.

 
Erin Madigan White Former Senior Media Relations Manager
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