The story behind the story

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Perhaps the headline should be “The data behind the story.” Because as people who care about data, we’re used to talking about story telling with data, about the importance of truth in data, and about the impact that good and bad data visualizations can have on perception.

We’ll keep doing that.

But at Discovery Summit Americas , we’re also going to dive into the stories that emerge during the exploratory phase of data analysis. In fact, we’ve invited three renowned journalists to share their experiences with using data in their work...from exploration to discovery to communicating their findings on three timely topics.

• Anna Flagg covers her investigation of the spurious connection between immigration and crime for The Marshall Project
• Andrew Ba Tran talks about opioid crisis reporting for The Washington Post
• Northeastern University’s Aleszu Bajak presents his work on the spread of COVID-19 misinformation

This session takes place live at Discovery Summit Americas next Thursday, Oct. 15 at 12:45pm ET.

More about the panelists...

Anna Flagg, Senior Data Reporter, The Marshall Project

Anna Flagg is The Marshall Project’s senior data reporter, covering criminal justice topics including immigration, crime, race, policing and incarceration. Her work has been recognized by the Global Editors Network’s Data Journalism Awards, the Society of News Design, and the Information is Beautiful Awards; she was a finalist for a 2019 Deadline Club Award.

Andrew Ba Tran, Data Reporter, The Washington Post

Andrew Ba Tran is a data reporter for The Washington Post’s Rapid Response Investigative Team and Adjunct Professor at American University, where he teaches quantitative methods and data visualization. In his work for the Post, Tran has, among other things, reported on how COVID-19 has disparately impacted certain communities, the spread of opioids across the country and the rise of right-wing violence. He shared in winning the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 2018 for coverage of candidate Roy Moore's alleged past sexual harassment of teenage girls and subsequent efforts to undermine the journalism that exposed it. Tran was previously Data Editor at The Connecticut Mirror's TrendCT.org and Data Producer at The Boston Globe. He has also worked in newsrooms of The Virginian-Pilot and Sun-Sentinel. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and advocate for open data and reproducible research.

Aleszu Bajak, Graduate Programs Manager, Northeastern University School of Journalism

Aleszu Bajak is a science and data journalist who teaches courses and manages the graduate programs at Northeastern University's School of Journalism. He is a former Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and Science Friday radio producer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Undark, The Washington Post, MIT Technology Review and Nature. At Northeastern, he is innovation lead for the Co-Laboratory for Data Impact, a faculty affiliate with the Global Resilience Institute and an affiliate of the NU Lab for Texts, Maps, and Networks.

Here's how to register for Discovery Summit Americas. (P.S. It's free this year!)