Class visit with Steve Doig: Data Journalism Pioneer

Steve Doig

Today we had the privilege of hosting former Miami Herald reporter and current Knight Chair in Journalism at Arizona State University in a discussion via Skype. We covered several topics during our time together including his work with the Miami Herald on his most famous article: The Big One! Doig used computer-assisted reporting to cover the severe damages left by Hurricane Andrew. The article also won the Miami Herald the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service. Unfortunately, the article was published well before the internet was being used by the Miami Herald and I haven't been able to locate a link for you readers. We also discussed the present state of data journalism and what has improved in the field since his work on The Big One.

"Good data journalism might only have one number involved." - Steve Doig

That was the response to a question I posed to Doig on finding the correlation between the damage caused by Hurricane Andrew and the possibility of human error being involved in the severity of that damage. That one number in The Big One was the year in which homes were built that were damaged by the storm. Doig used census records, housing inspection records, political campaign contribution reports and over 60,000 damage records to find that there were factors found in all those data sets that pointed to the lowering of housing standards in response to a housing boom that had taken place in south Florida during a 27-year hurricane hiatus. Politicians and private building companies had taken short cuts in order to keep up with the demand of the housing boom. 

A 1992 weather map of Hurricane Andrew's contact point with Florida's southern coast

"We're living in the golden age of data... the government collects a lot of data and they do a lousy job of analyzing their own data." - Steve Doig 

Doig gave that response when asked to give some words of advice to our class for the aspiring journalists about to enter their careers. Doig went on to say that because of the availability of data that there will never be a shortage of stories. That is a very insightful point and it demands a very raw and pure journalistic quality that is too often left underutilized. Sitting and poring through data sets to locate trends and anomalies is not something you would find most millennials as having the patience for but it is a quality that is essential for finding stories.

Later in his pitch on advice, a classmate asked Doig how he approaches a data set that he has been presented with. He offered the idea that often times you can work backward. He went on to say sometimes it's easier to think of the end of your story and then go into the data set and find the numbers you need to get you there. Once you're in the data set you can find the variables you need to present the numbers and place them into your story. He also made sure to impart a disclaimer: don't be surprised if you find something you didn't expect in your analysis as it almost always occurs. It's an unconventional process that makes almost all too much sense. I am very excited to use the Doig Method in my next of many journalistic endeavors.