Making good decisions with data: Simon Rogers
By Christi Warren
Access to free tools online is expanding the field of data journalism at a rapid pace, and as data journalism becomes more popular — those tools are only getting better, said Simon Rogers, data editor at Google. Rogers spoke at the 10th Data & AI for Media Week at Microsoft in San Francisco on May 2.
At Google News Lab, Rogers works to empower and advance reporting and storytelling around the world, through open source tools and products only Google offers.
One dataset Google has the unit capability of offering to newsrooms is data from its Google Search.
For example, after the election, Google Trends was able to show that search interest in “Move to Canada” reached its highest point in the United States since 2004, when now-President Donald Trump won primaries in seven states on Super Tuesday.
“The thing about data is it’s incredibly honest,” Rogers said. “You’re never as honest as you are with your search engine.”
Much of that data is available to the public and news organizations through Google’s datastore: googletrends.github.io/data.
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