trinity mirror data unit
TRANSCRIPT
The Trinity Mirror data unit was set up in 2014 with a team of two people and a remit to make
interesting content out of data.
The team has since grown and now includes a graphic designer, coder
and videographer as well as specialist data reporters.
We comprehensively monitor and interrogate officially-published
datasets and open-data sources to find agenda-setting exclusives.
We use Freedom of Information laws, scraping and fresh analysis of
existing datasets to investigate issues in the public interest.
We also create content about sport, entertainment, consumer issues -
anything our audiences care about, and where data is available.
We conceive of, design and build interactive gadgets to make the news personally relevant to our
audiences.
As well as news content, we also undertake longer-term projects.
Our acclaimed Real Schools Guide uses 25 datasets to rank all
state-funded schools and give parents a comprehensive picture.
It is published in print and online across 24 different Trinity Mirror
titles, and drive huge traffic throughout the year.
Our WW1 commemoration project systematically analysed more than
one million records of the war dead.
For the first time, we were able to assign exact numbers of casualties
to every town and city in Britain.
We were also able to say, for every community, who was the oldest,
youngest, first and last to die, and give other data insights, too.
We distilled this into 200+ tabloid-ready pages, generated
directly from our spreadsheet, for titles across Britain.
For the web we included a flexible and intuitive name/street/town
search which was used well over a million times.
Ahead of the election, we reclaimed the political agenda for our readers by creating local manifestos based
on bespoke polls.
We also build ‘gadget generators’ which allow our teams to create
templated interactives in a matter of minutes.
For example, each week our titles use our ‘pick the team’ generator to
create hugely popular shareable interactives like this...
Or our ‘keep or sell’ generator - our titles just have to enter the names and numbers of players to include,
and they get a gadget like this...
This is just a very short introduction to the range and volume of the
unit’s output. We do unique things with data every day.
We passionately believe three things.
1Data journalism is not a fad or a ghetto. It is mainstream journalism; it can and must be widely accessed and lead the ‘most read’ news lists.
2By making data personally relevant to our audiences we can make them
care about public-interest issues that should matter to us all.
3We are a journalistic enterprise. We stand or fall by the quality of our content ideas and ability to connect with mass audiences.
@davidottewell