Tomorrow's News, Tomorrow's Journalists

Q + A with Conrad Quilty-Harper

Conrad Quilty-Harper has been a Data Reporter for the Telegraph since June, after graduating from City University’s MA in Investigative Journalism.

He has previously contributed to Joystiq and Engadget, and worked on election coverage for Telegraph.co.uk.

I asked him a few questions about his role and what skills he thinks are valuable.

So, you’re currently a Data Mapping Reporter for the Telegraph. Can you explain what that means?

As a data reporter I need to be able to select and procure interesting data, find stories in that data and visualise it in an interesting and meaningful way. From the few stories I’ve worked on since I joined the Telegraph, that could mean a bulk FOI request of hundreds of councils (which produced a handful of stories and an interactive map by David Kinross so you could see your own council’s information), or a simple graph tracking BP’s share price during the oil spill (allowing you to click on events which might have affected the price).

How did you hear about the job?

I heard about the job while I was working on the Telegraph’s UK Political Database project.

What skills prepared you to be successful in this area?

The skills that prepared me were an understanding of Excel and databases and the willingness to look for and try out new tools which made building the project easier and faster. For example, I learned of Freebase Gridworks during the project, and learned how to apply that tool to correct errors in a database of over 2,500 election candidates, read this post about the power of gridworks: http://www.jenitennison.com/blog/node/145

How important do you think data-driven journalism will become in the future?

Data has always been important to journalists. Journalists often receive large and complicated spreadsheets and have to extract stories from them to tight deadlines. What’s changing is that journalists in the UK are using tools to do this job much faster and on a larger scale. They’re also specifically looking for data to find stories, and linking different datasets to add context.