The Data Journalism Podcast

The Data Journalism Podcast is a three-host show about the craft behind data-driven reporting, with Scott Klein, Alberto Cairo and Simon Rogers sharing the microphone. Its real subject is process. Guests get asked where the records came from, what the pushback was and what the numbers could actually support. That approach pays off in a session recorded live in front of an audience at the NICAR Conference in Indianapolis. After a round of quick interviews from the conference hallways, the hosts sit down with members of ProPublica's data team, whose series 'Life of a Mother', on pregnancy-related health emergencies after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, won a Philip Meyer Award. In one exchange, the team recalls epidemiologists warning that a badly handled analysis could damage the national conversation about abortion bans. Editors told the reporters to keep going, and the work narrowed to cases where the team held medical records and could see what happened in each hospitalization. A conversation with Mary Jo Webster, Data Editor at the Minnesota Star Tribune, comes from a newsroom under a different kind of pressure. It was recorded shortly after a shooting by federal agents at a protest, amid an immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota. The paper could not back up an official figure for how many immigration officers and Border Patrol agents were in the state, so the question became how to put that number in context. Webster also makes a practical argument: one data team cannot meet a moment like that alone, and reporters across the room need data skills. The hosts turn the same attention on their own projects. Simon's book 'What We Ask Google' is the subject of one conversation, and it reads search data as a record of who people are. Weather is his benchmark, since everyone searches for it, while smaller spikes, such as how to make slime followed by how to get slime out of the carpet, say more about people in his view. His conclusion is a hopeful one: people are not alone, and in a crisis they go looking for ways to help. Alberto introduces the Open Visualization Academy, an open-access project he launched to make data visualization methods more accessible, alongside two of its instructors. He traces the idea to a community where his heroes once sat down to give him feedback, and describes the academy as a way to give back. The Trans News Initiative, a project one host was involved in and funded, brings in the two people from The Pudding who handled its visuals, along with a data and graphics reporter from Civic News Company. A year-end conversation, 'A Look Ahead to 2026', weighs standout work including a database built by ProPublica, the Texas Tribune and Venezuelan partners from Venezuelan government records on Venezuelans sent to El Salvador. The mood throughout is warm and collegial, and the praise for colleagues comes easily. Even the music is data, turned into sound with TwoTone, an app that converts numbers into tunes. Sign-offs credit producer Ozzy Linas Goodman and invite listeners to send in upcoming data-driven projects for a possible feature.