Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism

People working in the media deal with data constantly. Journalists who are interested in improving their data skills will find this book useful. The book will concentrate on teaching R and will not go into statistical details. Data sets and projects chosen for the book are especially important in the journalism market.

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Do you want to use R to tell stories? This book was written for you—whether you already know some R or have never coded before.

Most R texts focus only on programming or statistical theory. Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism gives you ideas, tools, and techniques for incorporating data and visualizations into your narratives.

You’ll see step by step how to:






Analyze airport flight delays, restaurant inspections, and election results






Map bank locations, median incomes, and new voting districts



Compare campaign contributions to final election results



Extract data from PDFs



Whip messy data into shape for analysis



Scrape data from a website



Create graphics ranging from simple, static charts to interactive visualizations for the Web

If you work or plan to work in a newsroom, government office, non-profit policy organization, or PR office, Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism will help you use R in your world.

This book has a companion website with code, links to additional resources, and searchable tables by function and task.

Sharon Machlis is the author of Computerworld’s Beginner’s Guide to R, host of InfoWorld’s Do More With R video screencast series, admin for the R for Journalists Google Group, and is well known among Twitter users who follow the #rstats hashtag. She is Director of Editorial Data and Analytics at IDG Communications (parent company of Computerworld, InfoWorld, PC World and Macworld, among others) and a frequent speaker at data journalism and R conferences.