Managing metrics that matter for subscriptions

Managing metrics that matter  Mike Denison, audience engagement editor at Science News, sees analytics and metrics as a tool to “cut through the noise and look beyond page views.” This year at ONA20, learning about the importance of analytics and metrics has shown to be of growing interest for the industry at a time when … Continued

Push notifications: Segmenting and connecting with your audience

Why use push notifications?  When it comes to connecting with your audience, push notifications may not be the first thing that comes to mind. Some may even say notifications are outdated or irreverent when compared to the current technology. However, the company One Signal, saw an increase of two billion push notifications sent out each … Continued

Tips for using research to make behavioral analytics useful

“What we really want is to be the light that illuminates the newsroom as we move forward on our journalistic and business goals,” James Robinson, director of analytics for The New York Times said on the power of analytics. “If people can’t use that light to see where they’re going, they’re going to get stuck … Continued

Production studio at RJI receives facelift

The production studio at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism has received a facelift. Thanks to the upgrades, staff will now be able to deliver a product more in line with what audiences are accustomed to seeing online and on television in the 21st century, says Travis McMillen, senior … Continued

Your first web-scraping project will be easier than you think

Last week, a colleague emailed me with a data request. She was working on a story about the shifting sands of Republican congressional rhetoric on climate change and was wondering if GOP voting records had seen any corresponding shifts in recent years. She pointed out that one good measure of environmental voting comes from the … Continued

Make your reporting more diverse: Try a different network, redefine experts

In the survey of 750 journalists, editors and producers conducted by ExpertFile in conjunction with The Associated Press, journalists acknowledged that there remains a significant gap in representing a more diverse set of experts in their coverage. Despite a recognition of the need for more diverse voices in their coverage, the national survey also found … Continued

Mapping COVID-19 cases in Observable with Vega-Lite

Choropleth maps show how data varies across a geographic region, a visualization technique used often to present a wide variety of data, including economic data, election results and, more recently, the prevalence of COVID-19 cases and deaths. I recently created a choropleth map that pulls live county-level COVID-19 case data from the Missouri Department of … Continued