{"id":15268,"date":"2025-01-26T08:35:40","date_gmt":"2025-01-26T13:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/?p=15268"},"modified":"2025-01-31T07:28:20","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T12:28:20","slug":"co-lab-unlocks-the-power-of-data-science-in-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/2025\/01\/26\/co-lab-unlocks-the-power-of-data-science-in-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Co-Lab Unlocks the Power of Data Science in Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Lung (CDS\u201926) had no reporting experience four months ago. Now he has a byline in a national publication and a new interest in journalism sparked by Boston University\u2019s Justice MediaCo-Lab (JMCL)<\/a>, which teaches students to use computing and data science to advance justice and transparency.\u00a0Lung, a data science major, enrolled in the class to fulfill a writing requirement. However, he quickly became engaged in the interdisciplinary approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned that any kind of journalism needs data to back it up,\u201d said Lung, who recently published a piece in MarketWatch<\/a> with fellow JMCL students Katrina Scalise (JO\u201925), Mohammed Abaherah (CS\u201926), and Dana Yim (CAS\u201925). \u201cI was not expecting the two things to work so well together,\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ziba Cranmer, director of BU Spark!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

That synergy is exactly what JMCL co-founders Ziba Cranmer<\/a>, director of BU Spark! in CDS<\/a>, and Brooke Williams<\/a>, associate professor of the practice of computational journalism, envisioned when they launched the Co-lab in January 2021.\u00a0A collaboration between BU’s Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences (CDS),<\/a> the College of Communication<\/a>, Spark!, and the BU Hub Cross-College Challenge<\/a>, JMCL provides an institutional framework to create career pathways in data-oriented journalism.<\/p>\n

\u201cCDS embraces this interdisciplinary approach that shows our students the relevance of data science across disciplines. They learn lessons about collaboration, outside-the-box thinking, and connecting the dots between data and real-world issues that will serve them well in their real-world pursuits,\u201d said CDS Associate Provost Azer Bestavros<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Brooke Williams, associate professor of the practice of computational journalism<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

JMCL students have gone on to journalism careers and prestigious internships at The New York Times<\/em> and others.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe value the opportunity to work closely with CDS on a course that shows all of our students how we can be better together, building on the strengths of our two schools to create important, impactful investigations,\u201d said Mariette DiChristina, Dean of the BU College of Communication<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meeting a Need for Greater Collaboration<\/span><\/h2>\n

Pre-2021, Williams and Cranmer had been working with students who needed algorithms for projects. \u201cInstead of calling over to CDS individually for help, we realized it would be so much easier if we could get them all at once,\u201d said Williams. They applied for a Public Interest Technology University Network grant to bring together data science and journalism students.<\/p>\n

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Langdon White, clinical assistant professor of CDS and BU Spark! technical director<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Williams and Langdon White, clinical assistant professor of CDS and BU Spark! technical director, co-teach the class.<\/p>\n

White enjoys watching students explore each other\u2019s disciplines. \u201cThere wouldn’t be a story without the data. It’s like that whisper you heard in the hallway. You can’t disconnect the data and the story,\u201d said White, who served as editor of his college newspaper. \u201cYou get the story by looking at the data and saying, \u2018What questions do I have that I can answer with this data?\u2019 Sometimes you find something interesting, and that’s how you get your news story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hands-on Journalism Experience<\/span><\/h2>\n

During each JMCL session, journalism and CDS students collaborate on story project teams. They work directly with editors at outside publications, including WGBH, The Boston Globe, Propublica, Bay State Banner, and more.<\/p>\n

For the MarketWatch story, the student team investigated high spending by billionaires in the 2024 Montana Senate race. The CDS students wrote a Python script to scrape data from the Open Secrets website. \u201cThe data was always changing, which posed a challenge but also made the story more interesting,\u201d said Scalise.<\/p>\n

Abaherah led the cleaning and processing of the data in Flourish. Then the students created a visual of the data that helped focus the story.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe met with editors at Market Watch beforehand to solidify the major issues in the Senate race and what PAC groups and spending categories would be interesting to focus on,\u201d said Scalise. \u201cWe had the idea as a group, independently of MarketWatch, to categorize the PACs by cause and then track spending from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

MarketWatch editors suggested sources to contact for comment and helped connect students with them. \u201cI’m a data science major. I never thought I would be calling a company and asking if we could talk to them or asking for permission to use their data,\u201d said Lung. \u201cI was very surprised that I did something like that, and it was a really good experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cranmer noted the students gain more than just new skills. \u201cIf a student interviewing at Meta or an artificial intelligence company can show they had a byline in WGBH or the Globe, it makes them stand out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis type of journalism is super approachable,\u201d added Williams. \u201cI’ve been thrilled to see how much our students can contribute to the conversations happening in the world right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Toni Fitzgerald, CDS Contributor<\/p>\n

Banner photo from left to right: Professor Brooke Williams,\u00a0<\/em>Mohammed Abaherah (CDS\u201926), <\/em>Katrina Scalise (JO\u201925),\u00a0<\/em>Daniel Lung (CAS\u201926), <\/em>Dana Yim (CAS\u201925), Ziba Cranmer, director of BU Spark!, Professor Langdon White, clinical assistant professor of CDS and BU Spark! technical director, at the fall 2024 Demo Day event.<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Discover Boston University\u2019s Justice Media Co-Lab (JMCL), where students collaborate with top publications like MarketWatch, gain hands-on experience, explore interdisciplinary storytelling, and build career pathways in data-driven journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18026,"featured_media":15274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[230,310,1],"tags":[585,41,482,346],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18026"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15268"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15327,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15268\/revisions\/15327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}