Journalist, editor, analyst and trainer on computing, government, climate and data
I am running a one-day online course on Starting as a freelance journalist for NUJ Training Wales on Thursday 19 October. This is based on my two NUJ day courses for freelancers and is designed to help those who are thinking about going freelance or have recently done so.
The cost for NUJ members resident in Wales is £5, NUJ members not resident in Wales £10, others resident in Wales £15 and others £30.
On Census day, 21 March 2021, there were 478,700 Welsh-born people in England, making up 0.8% of the population, with some in every lower-tier local authority area. But the highest proportions were found in the Forest of Dean district of Gloucestershire (6.4%), Shropshire (5.8%), Herefordshire (5.3%) and Cheshire West (4.1%) – which are all also the four lower-tier local authority areas of England that border Wales. The pattern is clear from the map, although this uses upper-tier local authority areas, with 2.8% of the population of Gloucestershire born in Wales.
Continue reading “Six things Census 2021 dataset TS012 told me about England and Wales”
I will be running three freelancing courses for the National Union of Journalists in February, all of them online.
First steps in freelancing, which covers what you need to know to get started as a freelance journalist, will run on Friday 12 February. The cost for NUJ members is £40, student members £30 and non-members £110. You can find out more and book here.
Winning and negotiating freelance work, which goes deeper into these areas with more role-playing exercises, next takes place on Friday 26 February. It costs £50 for NUJ members, £40 for student members and £130 for non-members, with further information and booking here. Continue reading “NUJ freelancing courses in February”
If I have a data journalism specialist subject, it is Britain. Writing about its public sector means finding out how to extract information on it through Freedom of Information, parliamentary written answers and open data on spending; knowing how to use official published data on Britain’s localities; and understanding the often-messy structure of local public services including councils, police, fire and NHS organisations.
I have just published a new e-book, Britdata: Finding data on the UK for journalists, researchers and campaigners, covering these areas and others, including tips on dealing with data and specific information on all of the UK’s top-tier local authority areas. A PDF of the introduction is here with more information here.
According to recently-released data from the ONS, there were 4.82 million more people in the UK on this date in 2016 than on 30 June 2006, an increase of 7.9%. Many cities and big towns are growing much faster, with Manchester, Coventry, Peterborough, Luton, Milton Keynes, Slough and Bournemouth all up by more than 15%.
But 22 top-tier council areas (unitaries or county councils) have actually seen a fall in population over that decade. With one exception, they fall into two groups. Some are badly-off remote rural areas including Cumbria, Na h-Eileanan Siar (the Western Isles) and Ceredigion in Wales. Others are badly-off urban and suburban areas in the north of England and Scotland including Blackpool, Knowsley and Sefton on Merseyside and several authorities around Glasgow – although not the City of Glasgow itself, which grew 8.2%.
Continue reading “Britain’s shrinking councils: Blackpool, Ceredigion… Kensington and Chelsea”