Data Mining and Story Telling

I was drawn to News21 by the opportunity to investigate the role of race, ethnicity and identity in politics, so I was particularly excited to get the opportunity to investigate the Native American political situation this summer. Learning about the complexities of this population has been particularly interesting, especially given its unique political situation and history.

I have encountered some difficulties due to the lack of concrete data, including the Census data that had initially spawned the story; I had originally viewed the data as a jumping-off point for my story rather than the end-all be-all, but have come to realize how important hard data is if you are trying to document a trend.

Outside of the Native American story, I have gotten more than my share of data working with our interactive data project, so I suppose everything has balanced out in the end.