Data Journalist and Technology Expert

I believe data scientists belong in the newsroom.

This belief led me to an internship at Willamette Week. In addition to a crash course in journalism, I aided the investigative team with stories using my programming and data analytics expertise.

I also had the unique pleasure of working with Nigel Jaquiss, The 2005 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Investigative Reporting on multiple data-related stories.

Aaron Mesh (WW, News Editor) Nigel Jaquiss (WW, Reporter)

REFERENCES

Portfolio

01

I was asked to manually go through 2 years worth of clemency records for the name “Jesse Calhoun".

Using this program, I processed all clemency records from the time Gov. Brown entered office.

The team not only connected the dots to the mass commutations granted during the pandemic, we also had the data within the hour. WW got the scoop.

02

This is an annual tradition at WW.

WW missed printing this type of story in 2022 due to the amount of manual work it takes to populate the data and check for spreadsheets for data entry errors.

I created a script that ingested survey data and populated the same into a master data set.

In addition to eliminating manual data entry errors, this script enabled us to easily include new survey responses and update the statistics.

03

Using the Portland Fire & Rescue data, I generated a custom visualization to add to the article.

04

Unrelated to data journalism, this is a story that I pitched, researched, and wrote as a solo effort.

What initially was meant to be a paragraph in the cover story, this piece became a full side feature in print.

05

This story is an excellent example of my analytical skills combined with investigative research.

I identified multiple ways to give the average reader a perspective of the magnitude of the problem.

The alternate descriptions included presenting the equivalent emissions with cars and calculating the Social Cost of Carbon.