All posts by David McKie

About David McKie

DESCRIPTION This course will teach students how to locate, obtain, and read public records with an investigative mindset. Students will learn to probe public records to uncover connections and patterns of information that might be invisible from reviewing one record in isolation. Students will learn how public records fit into a complete research strategy with the aim of telling, investigative, original and breaking stories, or simply adding context to ongoing stories.

The Year in Data Journalism

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CAJ Data Journalism finalists

Unfounded (The Globe and Mail)
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/investigations/unfounded-sexual-assault-canada-main/article33891309/

Easy Money: How Fraudsters can make millions off Canadian investors, get barely punished and do it again (The Globe and Mail) 
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/investigations/easy-money-canadian-securities-fraud/article37350705/

Ottawa nursing homes have seen at least 163 cases of abuse since 2012 (Ottawa-Citizen)
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/more-than-2000-cases-of-non-compliance-and-163-cases-of-abuse-at-ottawa-long-term-care-homes

Big corporate donors give big to the B.C. Liberals (Vancouver Sun) 
http://vancouversun.com/business/local-business/big-corporate-donors-give-big-to-the-b-c-liberals

In search of Canada’s elusive shadow population (Discourse Media) 
https://www.thediscourse.ca/data/canadas-shadow-population

2017 Philip Meyer Award winners

Dangerous Doses (Chicago Tribune) 
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/druginteractions/

Too Broke for Bankruptcy
https://www.propublica.org/series/too-broke-for-bankruptcy

No Place for Foreigners: Why Hanna is invited to view an apartment and Ismail is not
https://www.hanna-und-ismail.de/english/index.html

Data Journalism Awards 2018 Shortlist

Who backs Canada’s Politicians (National Post)
http://special.nationalpost.com/follow-the-money/database

http://www.postmedia.com/2018/03/20/political-donations-database-allows-canadians-to-follow-the-money/

Is anything left of Mosul? (BBC News)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-9d41ef6c-97c9-4953-ba43-284cc62ffdd0

In 466 days, President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims (The Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?utm_term=.204623ba5205

Student Examples

The Halifax Explosion killed nearly 2,000 people. (Global News & Kings Journalism) 
https://globalnews.ca/news/3870656/interactive-map-halifax-explosion/
https://ukings.ca/news/journalism-students-create-multi-media-retelling-of-the-halifax-explosion/

The Ryerson School of Journalism, in partnership with The Toronto Star
https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2018/02/16/how-a-broken-jury-list-makes-ontario-justice-whiter-richer-and-less-like-your-community.html

Using Statistics Canada’s 2016 Census data

Census 2016: Toronto housing affordability now worse than Vancouver
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/census-2016-residents-in-toronto-area-struggle-the-most-with-home-affordability/article36717906/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&

Use of bots and scraping for storytelling

William Wolfe-Wylie and Dave Seglins (CBC Toronto)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tickets-scalping-blue-jays-1.4597286

Nael Shiab (L’Actualité)
http://lactualite.com/societe/2018/01/23/philippe-couillard-vous-fait-il-perdre-ou-economiser-de-largent-notre-robot-journaliste-repond-a-vos-questions/

Data can help you talk about a variety of stories

Rachel Browne (Vice News)
https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/d35eyq/black-and-indigenous-people-are-overrepresented-in-canadas-weed-arrests

Jacques Marcoux and Katie Nicholson (CBC Manitoba)
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform-custom/deadly-force

Nael Shiab (L’Actualité)
http://lactualite.com/societe/2017/06/28/un-canada-sans-immigrants/

http://lactualite.com/societe/2018/01/23/philippe-couillard-vous-fait-il-perdre-ou-economiser-de-largent-notre-robot-journaliste-repond-a-vos-questions/

Terra Ciolfe and Nick Taylor-Vaisey (Maclean’s)
http://www.macleans.ca/wooing-america/

Canada’s Highest Paid CEO’s (The Globe and Mail)
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/executive-compensation/table-canadas-top-100-highest-paid-ceos/article30131636/?from=30171589

Where the Immigrants in  Canada Live
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/map-where-immigrants-in-canada-live-1.4372261

Change in Median Rent, 2011-16 : Median Monthly Rent, 2016 https://taracarman.carto.com/builder/aa80fe48-d85f-4b5d-9d50-ecd8169384fc/embed?state=%7B%22map%22%3A%7B%22ne%22%3A%5B43.06710416548514%2C-96.84081785380842%5D%2C%22sw%22%3A%5B52.45452160147335%2C-65.22216551005842%5D%2C%22center%22%3A%5B47.97357964331227%2C-81.03149168193342%5D%2C%22zoom%22%3A6%7D%7D

Blacks in Ottawa and Gatineau

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Below is a map of blacks in Ottawa and Gatineau, based on the 2016 census. The dark colours represent neighbourhoods that experienced the fastest growth between 2011 and 2016.

Source: Statistics Canada

Median Household Income

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The map is zoomed  in to the Ottawa Census tracts. The dark colours represent the areas of highest median income in 2015, the most recent year for which Statistics Canada made income data available.

The city of Ottawa municipal boundaries are layered on top of the census tracts to provide a better sense of where the areas of interest are located.

Clicking inside the census tract boundaries produces a pop-up box with the median household income for 2005 and 2015, along with the percent change.

There are a few blank census tracts, which Statistics Canada says do not contain any data.

If you want to see other locations, simply zoom out, and then zoom in to the urban centre such as Vancouver, Toronto or Halifax.

Source: Statistics Canada

Recent Immigrants – the 2016 Census

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At first blush, it looks like there’s nothing on the map. So, you’ll have to zoom in. Areas like Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, and Halifax have the census tracts that contain the growth rates in recent immigrants between 2011 and 2016. Census tracts are located in communities with more than 100,000 people, and each census tract is a geographic area where between 2500 and 8000 people live. So, they’re quite small, as are the number of recent immigrants. Zooming in will take you to the colour-coded census tracts. The pop-up boxes contain numbers for 2011, 2016 and the percent difference. The rates in some areas are growing, remaining stagnant or shrinking. To avoid confusion, we have removed tracts in which zero recent immigrants were in 2011. Statistics Canada explains that “any change from 0 cannot be really measured as a % increase.” Although the agency does go on to explain that it’s important to “keep in mind that observed 0s should not be interpreted as true 0s – values could be rounded down or populations may not have been selected in the sample.”

Yellow represents negative growth. Tracts with the darker hues are in the positive.

MySQL Tutorial Using city of Ottawa 311 Data

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This page contains a tutorial for uploading the city of Ottawa’s 311 complaints data from Jan. 1, 2017, to August 2017 into MySQL.
Below  the video tutorial,  you’ll also find the MySQL queries that can be downloaded, and then uploaded to a MySQL query tab, allowing you to follow along.

As well, you’ll also find the PowerPoint presentation that accompanies the tutorial, complete with the page references in The Data Journalist. and the MySQL dump file that we uploaded for our Sept. 27 session.

http://www.davidmckie.com/OttawaServiceCalls_2013-2017_Dump_20170926.zip

Trafficking in Persons in 2016

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The following visualization is from Statistics Canada’s 2016 Incident-based crime statistics, by detailed violations filtered for human trafficking.

Source: Statistics Canada’s Incident-based crime statistics, by detailed violations

Canadian Average Housing Prices July 2016-17

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Click within the provincial boundaries to see the average housing prices for 2017. The table below the map shows city comparisons for July 2016 and July 2017, as well as the per cent differences, which are sorted in descending order.

To return to the original view, click anywhere outside the North American map.


Source: The Canadian Real Estate Association

Halifax Census Single-Parent Families

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This map is from the Statistics Canada 2016 Census, which measures the growth of single-parent families the Halifax-area census tracts. The darker colours represent areas with the highest increase. The lighter areas, the lowest increase. Click on each census tract to see the result.

Source: Statistics Canada