Journalist, editor, analyst and trainer on computing, government, climate and data
The owners of Britain’s best motorway service station, Tebay in Cumbria, have waited four decades to open a second one, on the M5 in Gloucestershire. With a grass roof and excellent cakes, it’s a place that Bilbo Baggins might appreciate.
First published on Beacon. Continue reading “Cake, tea and pork pie at Hobbit motorway services”
I kicked off a new series, Supplier side, for TheInformationDaily.com last week with two pieces: one on what Ukip’s rise means for businesses (not good), the other on the insights you can gain from cities and data:
Cities are found at the extremes of all kinds of official datasets. National Statistics produces workplace-based gross value added figures, roughly equivalent to gross domestic product for an area’s workplaces, for 193 areas of the UK. The UK-wide figure for 2012 was £21,674. London’s was £37,232, and if you break it down further, inner London west (including the City and Westminster) totted up £127,127, nearly six times the national average.
Everyone knows London is rich, but the same pattern is visible on smaller scales. The second highest gross value added in the UK is the City of Edinburgh’s £35,614, 74 per cent higher than the Scottish average of £20,423. Leeds generates £24,770 a head, compared with £19,149 across all of West Yorkshire. Cities are the places where regions and counties go to work, as well as countries.
Continue reading “On cities and data for TheInformationDaily.com”
The Second World War still looms large in Britain’s popular culture, in comedies and in documentaries about the Nazis. Germany has moved on; with most Britons now too young to remember, we need to do the same.
First published on Beacon.
Continue reading “70 years after D-Day, we need to stop mentioning the war”
Data plays an increasingly big part in journalism. It can conjure exclusive stories out of a slab of figures. It lets journalists take full advantage of government policies on open access and freedom of information. It can produce some really nice graphs and maps.
Data journalism training is now part of many post-graduate training courses, such as those run by Paul Bradshaw at Birmingham City University. But for those already in journalism, the National Union of Journalists is hosting a one-day course run by myself, which will provide a practical introduction to using data in journalism, on Monday 22 September at the NUJ’s headquarters near King’s Cross in London. You don’t have to be an NUJ member, but the course is cheaper if you are: £175 for employed NUJ members, £100 for unemployed ones, £200 for those in some affiliated unions and £275 otherwise. Continue reading “My one-day data journalism training course on 22 September”
One nice thing about Beacon is that every article has to have a header image. So in writing the Ends of Britain series, I increasingly take photos when I visit somewhere. A selection of header photos appears above; there are links to the articles from the image pages. Continue reading “Picturing the Ends of Britain: photos for Beacon”