So my main takeaway from the Delivering Data section of the Data Journalism Handbook is that news with a data component to it needs to be relevant and engaging. The data needs to tell a story. A story that the public needs to hear and that the public will be interested in. The data also needs to engage the public.
There’s a reason why we don’t just spew raw data all over the place: it’s boring. The data needs to be cleaned up and put into a nice package that is easy for a consumer to understand. That package is most often a data visualization. Humans are visual creatures and we know about the world from what we see. Putting data into a neatly packaged graphic makes it easier for a consumer to understand and digest. It also makes the data seem less intimidating. Putting data into visualizations also makes it more simple. Sure, one could put a huge table of data out there and say “Here!” but that doesn’t get the message across in the most efficient and simplistic manner. Visualizations are what turns raw data into easy to understand news stories.
One data set I found on the City of Austin’s Data Portal that could be used if it was more complete and comprehensive is the July 2014 Parks Events data sheet. Unfortunately, the data set is more of a calendar listing and there is only information for July 2014 and not any other month which seems odd. But if this data set was more complete and had more specific information to it, it would be interesting to see of all the events how many were music related, and the attendance of music related events compared to non-music related events. It would be also interesting to note the locations of the music events and put those on a map with markers for the frequency and size of those events. Below is a screenshot of the data set so you can see the information the City of Austin posts to their Data Portal. It might be more effective to contact the City and see if they have more complete records that aren’t available online.