DataBlog

We are pleased to announce a useful resource for Italy’s data journalism community.  The mailing list <datajournalismitaly@googlegroups.com> has already more than a dozen subscribers and a great discussion plan. To be clear, this initiative is mostly due to the pressing support of Maurizio Napolitano, researcher at Fbk in Trento and Italian ambassador for the Open Knowledge Foundation, and to the extremely positive experience of the Spaghetti Open Data list.
Here is a basic list of topics we plan to cover in the near future:
- best and most inspiring practices in data journalism in Italy and abroad;
- reviews of tools for scraping, analysis and visualization techniques;
- sources and ways of obtaining data when not readily available;
- info on conferences and relevant events worldwide.
Above all, we do hope this initiative will stimulate new contributions and collaborative data-based narratives.
For more info and to subscribe: http://groups.google.com/group/datajournalismitaly
Guido Romeo

The image "My C: Drive", used for the home page, is by bsimser and released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)License.

Will data save journalism? Of course not, but to create innovative information in the public interest we cannot underestimate these tools that are producing valuable results for both media outlets and citizens in the English-speaking world.

In our continuing effort to support this trend, the <ahref Foundation is gathering a sort of "data toolkit”, currently in its beta version and aimed at reporters (in a broader sense) interested in applying these techniques.

Given the few resources available in Italian, we are pleased to announce the release of an ebook titled "Open Data e Data Journalism by Lsdi, an organization devoted to freedom of information. Produced by Andrea Fama, this release takes into account both open data and data journalism – thus integrating two different but convergent strategies that are taking their baby steps in Italy. This project also reveals a large need to increase the level of training and awareness both in the journalism community and in the society at large. (Full disclosure: the ebook also includes positive reviews of the iData research project  promoted by the <ahref Foundation.

Finally, the non-profit Open Knowledge Foundation and the European Journalism Center are working on a comprehensive handbook on data journalism. Aimed at explaining “how you can approach data journalism from scratch with no prior knowledge,” this project is a direct result of a series of collaborative sessions held at the recent 2011 Mozilla Festival in London.

Stay tuned for more details about these and other exciting projects!