Investigative Journalist in Houston, Texas
Last night Jen and I enjoyed a rare date night at one of our favorite restaurants downtown, Bohanan’s, a swanky oasis of cocktails, jazz — and no screaming Tedesco children. If you’ve ever wondered exactly how much money your favorite haunt makes in alcohol sales, there’s now an easy way to find out. Joe Kokenge, …
The friendly folks at the Association of Health Care Journalists held a conference last week in San Antonio, and they invited me to present an introduction about Google Fusion Tables. If you’re familiar with Microsoft Excel or Access, you might like Fusion Tables. It’s a free tool that allows you to create interactive maps and …
What happens when you’re hit by a city vehicle and file an insurance claim against San Antonio? Now you can find out by searching a database that tracks every claim filed against the city in the past decade. I stumbled across this story by using Google’s advanced search options. Google lets you search specific websites …
All this dutiful work helps us compare this year’s drought to past dry spells.
Check out this amazing presentation at Google I/O 2011 about Google Fusion Tables.
Public databases empower journalists to do their own research and find surprising answers.
Matt Stiles, data guru at the Texas Tribune, wrote a great tipsheet with links to user-friendly Web tools for generating charts and maps. Stiles was one of the presenters at a Watchdog Workshop last weekend in Austin organized by Investigative Reporters and Editors. Related: Sign up for blog updates from John Tedesco These are handy …