- Data journalism is a collaborative field with journalists growing into better reporters
- with the help of practice and partnership.
- In this episode of the IRE radio podcast, veteran reporter, editor, and computer programmer
- Ben Welsh joins to talk about his journalism career and how he got to where he is today.
- As the founder of Reuters News Applications Desk, where he is currently an editor, Welsh
- has gained a multitude of tips and tricks for data journalism that he will share with
- you throughout this episode.
- Additionally, we discuss his personal site that archives his various data in investigative
- journalism panels and resources.
- This is Nakyla Carter and you're listening to IRE radio.
- So the first thing I want to say is just when did you know journalism was your thing and
- then how did you nurture it to be the person you are today?
- Oh man, we can go way back with this, I'm getting old.
- I never set out to be a journalist.
- It wasn't something I did much in high school or a career goal I went into college with.
- I was an undergraduate at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois after growing up in Eastern
- Iowa and kind of stumbled into journalism accidentally.
- I had a job answering phones in the communication department as part of kind of one of these
- work study programs to make a little money while I was in school and that kind of thing.
- In that job I was entrusted with some very important responsibilities.
- One of them was pinning up flyers on the bulletin boards around campus about upcoming events
- that the department was running.
- So I was often the first person to see the notice of new things happening.
- One day I was pinning up the flyer and I noticed that it was an advertisement for an internship
- with two journalists who were taking up residency at the university, Carol Marine and Don Mosley.
- They were looking for a student to join them.
- I was pinning in, I thought, "Hey, that sounds cool."
- It sounds a lot cooler than this job pinning up flyers on bulletin boards.
- Because I was the first person to see the flyer, I suspect I was the first person to
- apply.
- I never asked how many other people applied, but I ended up getting that internship despite
- being ridiculously unqualified and began my journalism career, as it was, as the grunt
- assistant to this producer and correspondent team who were doing weekly television pieces
- and newspaper columns and some long-form documentaries.
- I got into journalism as an accident and pretty quickly saw it was a lot of fun.
- It was a great way to engage with the world and learn about it and was also a challenge
- and maybe something I could do.
- I think that was amazing because I think it's important to understand that everybody's
- plight into journalism is completely different.
- It's always interesting to hear how did you get started there.
- You talk about how you kind of got into the journalism realm.
- How did you start doing more so data type of things?
- I was, as I said, pretty unqualified to work in this journalism office I was working in,
- but data and the work that I do now today quickly found me in a public records request.
- We got a tip that a local suburb of the city had.
- The tip was that a local alderman had been bid-rigging some legal contracts in this city
- to rack up some money for himself and his allies.
- To check it out, we filed a public records request asking for a list of every legal contract
- or fee that was paid out to the city, to this particular law firm.
- It was my first FOIA ever.
- After a few weeks or months, I can't remember exactly, finally in the mail came a big long
- printout, a computer printout.
- This is like a 1990s or '80s style one where it's an accordion sheet of paper, dozens of
- pages connected by the little tear strips on the outside.
- It was all the legal fees, but they were spread out in this dot matrix style across a lot
- of paper.
- We initially had the question, "Well, how the heck are we going to make sense of this?"
- I honestly don't remember or don't know where I got the idea, but I thought, "Hey, what
- if I type it all into a spreadsheet?"
- It kind of came to me.
- I sat down there.
- It took me a day or two to go through it all and double and triple check it.
- We arrived at kind of a pretty big number, a big enough number to justify the story being
- on the news.
- We kind of got our little scoop, our investigative piece, out of the tip, the FOIA, and the data
- entry.
- With that, I kind of was hooked, one, I saw the data was kind of a shortcut to getting
- to work on really cool stories, more than just kind of the run of the mill stuff, things
- I found exciting.
- Hey, as the guy who could sit down and figure out the tech, it might be a niche for me or
- a place for me to be the guy who fills that gap and helps make those stories happen.
- Those two things kind of got me going on it.
- I wanted to go further down that road, so I went to the University of Missouri and was
- a graduate assistant at IRE NYCAR, where I really got to focus on not just faking it,
- but actually learning how to do these skills, learning how to code, learning what real analysis
- was, getting a lot more practice.
- That set me off onto the path I still am today, now more than 20 years later.
- On that respect, I think that you'd grow so much as a data journalist by obviously knowing
- the practical experience, but also talking to people and collaboration and learning other
- people's tips and tricks.
- So I have to talk about your website, PowerWire, because I was like, this is amazing.
- I wish I had seen this last year.
- But yeah, like what made you want to compile all that information?
- Because it's not something that you're required to do, but it's amazingly helpful.
- Well, you know, it's nothing that happened overnight.
- It's the accumulation of kind of years and years of chipping stuff together.
- But you know, for me, the annual IRE NYCAR conference is really just kind of an opportunity
- to challenge myself and for all of us in our community to come together, to say, what do
- we want to teach each other?
- What's important?
- What have we learned in the last year that's worth passing on to other people or that we're
- excited about or that we want to share?
- You know, and I look at every year's conference as kind of that type of moment or opportunity
- and try to drum up new stuff.
- And I've, you know, been doing it long enough that I kind of got a little playbook for it,
- a little routine, and I've just been adding, you know, incrementally more and more of these
- kind of lessons that I put together with other people who helped me, by the way, of course.
- And it's become, you know, over time, this collection.
- And do you have any favorites or any talks that you have that, you know, you look forward
- to saying?
- Because I know some of them you repeat and some of them you tweak and things like that.
- But is there ever one where you kind of are like, I wish that something like this existed
- when I first got started?
- Well, I don't know if I have a favorite child, so to speak.
- To me, the best thing about it for me, there's a lot of great things about it.
- I love coming together with peers and people I respect to help create the classes and that
- sort of formative experience of us collaborating to really take an idea or a technique that
- hasn't really been fully fleshed out and trying to put it on paper and get it across.
- Like, that creative process is really stimulating and always rewarding to me, and that keeps
- me doing it.
- And then, you know, the conference itself is a great experience, but, you know, maybe most
- of all is the thing that comes out of putting it on the web and just kind of having a little
- bit of faith in the world or giving it out there is I am just often stunned to hear from
- people on the other side of the planet who I've never met, never will, who will reach
- out and say they learned this or that just based on a resource that we put on the web,
- not really knowing what would happen with it.
- And there's something that is kind of magical to that, that is a hit I keep chasing or that
- I just love, and it really reminds me of my own formative experiences on the internet
- as a teenager in the 90s, you know, I'm old enough that, you know, I remember life before
- the web and as a kid in rural Iowa, its arrival was a big deal.
- And the internet was really my kind of gateway to the world and such an exciting, stimulating
- place to learn and connect and to still have experiences like that 30 years later with people
- in Ukraine or Brazil or wherever else is just, it's the magic of technology that I find so
- rewarding.
- You know, I'm learning about your plight to where you are today and you went from not
- knowing that journalism was something that you even were interested in to creating an
- entire news applications desk.
- How did you know that that is something that that newsroom needed and how do you operate
- in that position?
- Not sounding too grandiose or self-assured, I think we are entering kind of a new era
- of data journalism in kind of the commercial space, commercial media, which is I think
- one of industrialization and specialization.
- You know, when I started out at the LA Times in 2007, the whole idea of putting data on
- the internet on a newspaper website was still a pretty new one.
- We weren't the first to do it for sure, you know what I mean?
- But in our context, it was definitely new, and I think a lot of what was going on even
- at the leading news organizations then was really experimental.
- You had really small teams of people kind of goofing around trying to make things happen
- on the web, often totally separate from their mainline newsrooms.
- You know, it's good to remember that it was that 2008 election was probably really the
- first one where you had really widespread live election results on newspaper and news
- organization websites.
- When Obama was first elected, they did, there was examples of that before, but the really
- kind of first like widespread publication of it was that time.
- And it was really kind of an experiment that was then wildly successful.
- And I think there's been many other examples since then running up to coronavirus trackers.
- And you can go down the list of all these different ways that taking data directly to
- the audience in the form of dashboards and databases and visualizations that aren't traditional
- stories, you know what I mean?
- That has gone from an experiment to really a widget or a product that we want to manufacture,
- you know, inside the metaphorical assembly line or factory of your newsroom.
- And so it's my view as we enter, as we want to go from experiment to mass production,
- we need to, you know, institutionalize, specialize, and really ramp up how we are organized to
- create these widgets, you know?
- And in my view, that means making a news desk, which is its own little assembly line in the
- factory that focuses not on the kind of battleship investigative reporting projects, not necessarily
- on kind of one-off graphics to accompany traditional text stories, but instead on these data products,
- whatever you want to call them, that are incredibly popular with audiences and are also, it could
- be Capital J journalism as well, right?
- And so this news application's desk is our attempt to name something that does that.
- I don't know if I love the name, if you have a better name, I'd love to hear it, but that's
- what we mean.
- Basically, that's what we're trying to do here at Reuters, is to create a group of people
- who just focus on making that type of thing.
- I think that's amazing, especially because, like you said, we're moving towards a time
- in data journalism where I like to say that people almost expect data to be in the story.
- That's become way more normal, and so I think it's amazing that you guys are thinking about
- this.
- Yeah, I think we can't forget that.
- I think because data journalism grew out of the investigative reporting tradition, or at
- least a large part of it did, there's many streams and strands, there's not one way.
- But the IRE/NICAR tradition is really one that stems back to investigative reporting,
- which is really what I was trained in and what I love and respect, and I've done a lot of
- it in my career, but the justification for that type of work, for the investment, for
- the dollars to be spent to fund it, is typically one that's based on prestige and public service,
- which are two of the very high call-ins of our profession, but in a time of decreasing
- resources and brutal disruption to the economic model that supports journalism, it can be
- difficult to justify jobs and investment in data journalism if it's strictly seen as a
- prestige project, so that's bad news, baby.
- But the good news is, and I think we often undersell this good news, is that these data
- products I'm talking about, your live election results or your coronavirus tracker, these
- are, yes, they are public service, and yes, they ought to be seen as prestigious.
- They have won some of the highest awards, but they are also popular, right?
- I think last year, Reuters.com, the most popular thing all year, were the live election results
- done by our team in London, led by John McClure, and the most popular thing in the history
- of the Los Angeles Times, where I used to work for the most read piece of journalism
- in the 100-and-whatever-year history of the LA Times, was its coronavirus tracker, and
- I suspect the same is for the New York Times and many, many other news organizations, and
- I think we shouldn't sell ourselves short.
- We're making things people want.
- A lot of people say journalists and math don't go together, or a lot of journalists aren't,
- I guess, set up naturally to do data, stuff like that, but what is your advice for someone
- who wants to get into that realm of things?
- It is a hot commodity right now, and it's an amazing skill set to have.
- Well, then, that's your advantage.
- You know what I mean?
- If other people are avoiding it and you're willing to take it on, that's going to give
- you the edge, that's going to give you the front foot, and I think you should not listen
- to people who are discouraging you to not go down this road if it's where you want to
- go, because, as you just said, we know it's where things are headed, and we know that
- it's valuable, and so don't be afraid to have the confidence of that and surround yourself
- with people who agree with you and find mentors and role models that'll help you move down
- that path.
- It's a lane that's wide open.
- What are some things that you live by when you're doing data analysis and news application
- creation?
- I don't know if I can rewind.
- What would I tell younger me?
- I mean, I've studied harder in high school, you know what I mean?
- I don't know.
- I don't have any regrets or any big thing like that.
- There's reassurance, I think, we all need when we're young and that I needed like everyone
- else, which is if you work hard, it will pay off.
- I've seen that in my own life, and I've seen it in many others, and I would just encourage
- people to ... I almost said lean in.
- I won't say lean in.
- I'll say work hard and be a good person and it'll work out.
- That's what I would tell myself because I was a very nervous, young, country kid in
- the city.
- As far as the work we're doing, I mean, to me, you got to have high standards for yourself
- and you can't cut corners and you got to do the work.
- I think that that means coming in every day like you got something to prove, not being
- afraid of challenges and realizing that by pushing through them is how you're going to
- do something you're proud of.
- Don't be lazy.
- It's the same message maybe, but it's really what I believe.
- I think it's all about progress and push and not giving up.
- I have to ask some things.
- Do you prefer Python or R?
- Why?
- I'm definitely a Python person, but I respect R and really about the results.
- I think there's a lot of great and talented people who work in R, but Python is obviously
- superior.
- I agree.
- I wholeheartedly agree.
- And then I wanted to ask, what is your favorite data journalism memory?
- Something that if it's a story or maybe an interview or just something that happened
- where you're just like, yeah, this is the career for me.
- Well, there's that first story I told you earlier where I kind of had the spark of the
- light bulb went on.
- This could be something for me.
- To me, the most powerful moments are often, and maybe it does go back to those investigative
- pieces, but when statistics and data lead me to someone's doorstep or to somewhere in
- the world and help both me, the journalist who's trying to figure out the story, but
- more importantly in the moment and maybe in the cosmic sense, the people who lived the
- story helped them better understand what the heck happened to them in life, particularly
- if it was something bad.
- I did a whole series of stories about the local 911 system in Los Angeles where we uncovered
- a lot of systemic flaws and how emergency care is delivered, how the fire department
- is run.
- And some of the most powerful memories they had is where the statistics would tell us,
- well, there's this kink in the system.
- There's this inefficiency, there's this problem, and it could be having really bad effects
- out there in the world.
- But then we followed the data, individual calls out to doors and knocked on them to
- see what really happened in this case or that case where the data says something maybe went
- wrong.
- And what we found often is, yeah, it did go wrong.
- And so there's this way in which you kind of discovered a story based on a spreadsheet.
- But then also there's this powerful moment of connection with the person on the other
- end of the journalistic exchange where you help them understand why something bad happened
- in their life and help them be part of an effort to describe and share that with their
- community so that maybe it can be fixed and it doesn't happen to someone else.
- And to me, those moments of where statistics and shoe leather and the kind of connection
- with a subject come together are kind of these magical moments that data does make possible
- because when you don't just go off your own bias or instincts, when you let the math and
- science lead the way, you can have these powerful moments of discovery.
- And they're not the same as Albert Einstein and E=MC squared or whatever.
- But they are powerful.
- And so I struggle to describe it and contextually it would be almost impossible to give you
- every detail of what that was really like without writing a novel or something.
- But like those moments of discovery and connection where statistics and shoe leather meat are
- intense.
- To access Ben Welsh's site and his resources, be sure to check out p-a-l-e-w-i-dot-r-e.
- You can also find the link in the description of this episode.
- Reporting for IRE and Nightcar, I'm Nikkyla Carter, and this has been an episode of the
- IRE Radio Podcast.
- Doug Meggs edited the script of this episode, and we are recorded in the studios of KBIA
- at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
A conversation with Ben Welsh
By Ben Welsh • • IRE Radio in SoundCloud
Recording
Listen on the original podcast site