> There was no database, but the best databases aren’t handed to reporters. They’re handmade. I opened a blank spreadsheet and started digging through years of old news clips and pageant websites. I tracked who was competing where, what titles they were winning, and how.
The more experienced I get in journalism and data work, the more convinced I am that the spreadsheet is the first and best tool for the kind of bespoke, flexible, and iterative data collection and modeling that journalists find themselves having to do -- i.e. building a dataset from scratch.
The more experienced I get in journalism and data work, the more convinced I am that the spreadsheet is the first and best tool for the kind of bespoke, flexible, and iterative data collection and modeling that journalists find themselves having to do -- i.e. building a dataset from scratch.