Analyze a spreadsheet/database and write roughly an 800- to 1,000-word story. Use 12-point Times New Roman, Microsoft Word doc with one-inch margins and AP Style. This will be a well-researched work of journalism based in part on spreadsheet or database analysis and at least three interviews you conduct. Students are encouraged to begin thinking and working on this project the first week of class. You will upload your data with your story on Canvas.

You will be expected to talk to a wide range of people for your story and to quote several as appropriate. Move beyond traditional interviewing techniques to shadow your subjects, spend time with them in their environments. Use all of your senses to tell the story. (We’ll talk about this a great deal more in class). If you think your particular story will run long or short in length, see your professor/editor well in advance to discuss. Every story is different! So lengths might differ. I’m ok with that.

Beyond the story, two other elements are required. Each is worth 50 points.

At the end of the semester each student will give a brief presentation of findings and show their data to the class. A signup sheet will be distributed in class to sign up.

Each project must also include a simple data visualization.

Be thinking about how you might illustrate your story – photos and graphics – and be ready to discuss those in our budget meetings. The goal is to help the audience easily understand complex data visually.

Data collected using NodeXL to pull from the YouTube API, used to create a pivot table with sentiment analysis.  The sentiment analysis was then imported into Tableau to create a chart shown below.