online journalism | Online Journalism Blog
Earlier this month I was interviewed for a feature about data journalism in the Argentina newspaper La Nacion. Here are the full questions and answers, in English, published as part of the FAQ series. A new AI function is being added to Google Sheets that could make most other functions redundant. But is it any good? And what can it be used for? Here’s what I’ve learned in the first week…
AI in Google Sheets
AI has been built into Google Sheets for some time now in the Clippy-like form of Gemini in Sheets. But Google Sheets’s AI function is different. Available to a limited number of users for now, it allows you to incorporate AI prompts directly into a formula rather than having to rely on Gemini to suggest a formula using existing functions. At the most basic level that means the AI function can be used instead of functions like SUM, AVERAGE or COUNT by simply including a prompt like “Add the numbers in these cells” (or “calculate an average for” or “count”). But more interesting applications come in areas such as classification, translation, analysis, and extraction, especially where a task requires a little more ‘intelligence’ than a more literally-minded function can offer.
I put the AI function through its paces with a series of classification challenges to see how it performed. Here’s what happened — and some ways in which the risks of generative AI need to be identified and addressed.
Data Acquisition Techniques for Journalism
In many countries public data is limited, and access to data is either restricted, or information provided by the authorities is not credible. So how do you obtain data for a story? Here are some techniques used by reporters around the world.
Tools like ChatGPT might seem to speak your language, but they actually speak a language of probability and educated guesswork. You can make yourself better understood — and get more professional results — with a few simple prompting techniques. Here are the key ones to add to your toolkit.
Datadrevet historiefortelling kan deles i syv hovedkategorier ifølge en analyse av 200 artikler. In the first of two posts, I will demonstrate the four most used angles in news stories, how they can give you more opportunities as a reporter, and how they can help you work more effectively with data.
