The Nerd Blog
How we make stuff.
Secrets for data journalists, developers, newsroom designers, engagement specialists, and more.
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Following the Money is Now Easier with FEC Itemizer
Today we’re announcing changes to our FEC Itemizer database that will help you stay informed about who is spending that money and where they are spending it.
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Upgrading FEC Itemizer for the 2016 Campaign
We're making our interactive database of campaign finance filings more stable and adding new features.
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Meet the New ProPublica Campaign Finance API, Same as the Old API
We’re launching an API that programmers can use to work with election fundraising and expenditure data.
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A More Secure and Anonymous ProPublica Using Tor Hidden Services
We’ve launched a “Tor hidden service” that lets you to browse our site more securely and anonymously. Read this post to find out how to use it, and how to make your own.
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The Stories of Everyday Lives, Hidden in Reams of Data
Data journalists use data to tell stories that help readers make better choices and live better lives.
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Introducing FEC Itemizer: A Tool to Research Federal Election Spending
Today we’re launching a new interactive database that makes it easier to get detailed federal campaign finance data.
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On Repeat: How to Use Loops to Explain Anything
From animated gifs to looping interactives, we're seeing more and more ways of presenting ideas, explaining processes, and just capturing small moments in endless, repeating sequences. Here's how loops work and how you can use them.
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Antebellum Data Journalism: Or, How Big Data Busted Abe Lincoln
An 1848 investigative news story that relied on heavy data analysis snared big fish, including two future presidents.
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One Year, 2,000+ Downloads: Here’s How Our Data Store Is Doing
A year after we launched it, here’s what our Data Store looks like.
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What I Learned From My Fellowship at ProPublica
News applications fellow Yue Qiu reflects on her seven months on ProPublica's news apps team.
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Reporting Recipe: How to Investigate Health Professionals
We've launched two 50-state guides to researching the license and disciplinary records of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals.
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Reporting From the Youngest Land in the World
How we got aerial photographs for our project on Louisiana’s effort to save its southeastern coast.
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How to Ask Programming Questions
A guide to getting your programming questions answered on the Internet.
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A Big Article About Wee Things
"The details are not the details. They MAKE the design." A guide to using little things to make better graphics and interactives.
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Why We Removed the Form 990 PDFs From Nonprofit Explorer
Last month, we removed links to download Form 990 document PDFs from our Nonprofit Explorer interactive database.
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The Road to Health is Paved With Good Data
The nonprofit Health Data Consortium held its fifth-annual Health Datapalooza last week in Washington, D.C. Here are some highlights.
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ProPublica News Applications Desk Receives Data Journalism Award
The Global Editors Network recognized ProPublica one of eight Data Journalism Awards, announced today in Barcelona.
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The Sisterhood of the Traveling Plants
Last week, news apps developers from ProPublica participated in a "Future of Food" hackathon sponsored by National Geographic.
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Introducing Landline and Stateline: Two Tools For Quick Vector Maps in your Browser
Today we're releasing code to make it easier for newsrooms to produce maps quickly.
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What Heartbleed Means for Newsrooms
What newsroom developers can do about the Heartbleed security bug.
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A Conceptual Model for Interactive Databases in News
As part of a conference about archiving news applications, a group of journalists developed a framework to understand how interactive databases — sometimes called news applications — are made.
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How to Send Us Files More Securely
We’ve launched a more secure way for sources to send us sensitive messages and files.
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How We Made the 3-D New York City Flood Map
We used features only available in the most modern web browsers to create the interactive map of the city's flood zones.
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Calculating ‘The Price of an Internship’
How much do you pay in tuition to take an internship? Here's how we calculate tuition share in "The Price of an Internship."
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How We Calculated Injury Rates for Temp and Non-Temp Workers
Worker’s comp data collected from five states shows temps are far more likely to be injured on the job.
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Why Develop in the Newsroom?
If you’re a software developer looking to make more of a social impact with your talents, there are plenty of exciting opportunities for you to break into the field of journalism! But what’s it like?
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Data-Driven Journalism’s Secrets
I’ve spent the last few weeks in the U.S. on a Fellowship with the International Center for Journalists, talking to some American newsrooms about how they approach data-driven journalism. Here’s a bit about what I’ve learned.
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Meet our New OpenNews Fellow
We’re excited to announce that Brian Jacobs will be ProPublica’s OpenNews fellow in 2014.
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Announcing the Nonprofit Explorer API
Today’s update to Nonprofit Explorer also includes a free-to-use API that developers can use to access the data behind Nonprofit Explorer programmatically.
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Technical Difficulties on iPhone and iPad App
We’re submitting a fix today for a startup crash on the ProPublica app for iPhone and iPad.
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Why You Should Be our 2014 OpenNews Fellow (and Join the Epic Team of Awesome)
For the second year, the ProPublica News Applications desk has a unique opening for a ten-month-long fellowship as part of the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews program.
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Where Do “Good” Software Practices Fit Into News Applications
When building news apps, good software practices don't go out the window; but something else becomes more important — the content and the story.
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Upton: A Web Scraping Framework
Today we’re releasing a new open source project, which will make web scraping easier by providing reusable components.
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Transcribable: Free the Files to Go!
Today we’re releasing a new open source project, which will enable any organization with a DocumentCloud account to do crowdsourcing using documents.
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Creating Games for Journalism
Our job as journalists is to inform the public. By using emotion and empathy, games allow us to inform readers in a new way—and one in which they both remember and understand.
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P5 Resident Aram Chung
This week’s P5 Resident is Aram Chung.
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Four Games that Tackle Serious Issues
Four examples of how news organizations might use games to help people understand — and act on — serious issues.
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Simulations Let Readers Experience Stories for Themselves
Real-as-life simulation games can help readers understand the investigations we write about and the obstacles our sources face every day.
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What News Nerds Can Learn from Game Nerds, Day One
What journalism can learn from games aimed for positive social impact.
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Joanna Kao, P5 Resident
The sixth ProPublica P5 Resident is Joanna Kao.
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Design Principles for News Apps & Graphics
How to apply classic design principles to your newfangled interactive graphics and apps.
