This weekend, I’m attending the Science Writers conference in Memphis, Tennessee. I’ve been to a few journalism conferences in 2022, along with other larger events (theater performances, concerts, etc.), and Science Writers has the best COVID-19 safety protocols I have encountered so far.
The event’s safety protocols include:
A vaccine requirement (which includes boosters);
Masks required indoors unless one is actively eating or drinking;
No eating or drinking in conference rooms (in other words, masks stay on);
Outdoor space for all meals and networking events;
Virtual options for people who did not wish to attend in person.
I have really appreciated the COVID safety protocols at #SciWri22, especially the outdoor seating for meals and networking breaks. wish all conferences did this! pic.twitter.com/jejtBZLz1k
I have particularly appreciated the outdoor space for meals. For me, it really takes the stress out of the networking to not worry about constantly keeping on a high-quality mask—because I know I’m in a well-ventilated, outdoor location.
From talking to a couple of people in leadership of the National Association of Science Writers and Council for the Advancement of Science Writing (which jointly organize the conference), I’ve learned that committing to these safety measures wasn’t easy—so I wanted to convey my deep appreciation. Measures like these make it possible for higher-risk people to attend the event, while also demonstrating the values of our organizations.
This weekend, I spoke on a panel at the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) annual conference, held in person in Austin, Texas. (Yes, the irony of my first air travel post-end of the mask mandate being a trip to a health journalism conference is not lost on me.)
My session focused on COVID-19 data, particularly the data gaps left by the federal government—which, longtime readers know, is a topic I’ve reported on extensively. We provided attendees with a tipsheet, sharing some source suggestions and tips for reporting on this topic.
Derek Kravitz, my editor and project lead of the Documenting COVID-19 project, moderated the session; Nsikan Akman, health and science editor at Gothamist/WNYC, was another panelist. Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, author of the incredible Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter, was scheduled to be a panelist as well, but unfortunately couldn’t make it to the conference last minute. (Her contributions are still reflected in our slides and tipsheet, though.)
During the session, we discussed a range of COVID-19 data topics, including:
The lack of standardization for COVID-19 data collection and reporting in the U.S., exacerbated by our decentralized healthcare and public health systems;
Discrepancies between New York State and New York City data, as an example of this lack of standardization (a specialty for Nsikan);
Challenges around (and some recommendations for) communicating COVID-19 data to audiences;
One of the most challenging aspects of reporting on the pandemic has been accessing reliable, accurate data about COVID-19 and its impact on Americans. The need for trustworthy, real-time data has caused a few journalism and nonprofit groups to create repositories to pull together data from varying sources.
A Thursday session at Health Journalism 2022 in Austin, “The quest for COVID-19 data: Where “official sources” fell short and journalism stepped in,” focused on these efforts and provided journalists with a wealth of resources for up-to-date data related to the pandemic.
Most high-income countries have national health care systems, so data collection and collation is far more straightforward than in the federalized U.S. health care system, where a mix of private and public payers are governed by national and differing state laws. Without a national registry or centralized healthcare system, it’s been harder to track statistics on COVID cases, hospitalizations, deaths, vaccinations, and other relevant numbers.
The tipsheet from this session includes links and blurbs to a few of the panel’s favorite COVID-19 data sources, including:
CDC mortality data, cleaned and sorted by Documenting COVID-19
HHS Community Profile Reports
MCH Strategic Data’s COVID-19 in schools dashboard
COVIDPoops19 dashboard
Historical wastewater data from CDC NWSS
Long COVID Source List
Health Equity Tracker
Open Government Data
And the tipsheet also includes a few tips for communicating COVID-19 data, supplemented with stories that provide useful examples. Here are the tips:
Explain where data come from and how they’re collected – using as little jargon as possible.
Be clear about uncertainties and caveats; what can’t the data tell you?
Share how data points, trends or study results can be translated into actionable information for readers.
Use questions from readers to guide reporting.
Look for differences in how state and municipalities track their COVID-19 data.
Look for ways that data collection methods (or the lack of clear methods) may hide health inequities.
Use visuals/multimedia to communicate the pandemic’s immense tolls.
Provide larger context about the reasons why COVID-19 data in the U.S. are often fractured and difficult to interpret.
This time next week, I’ll be at NICAR 2022—the Investigative Reporters and Editors’ annual data journalism conference. And I do mean “at”: though the conference this year will be held in a hybrid format with both in-person and virtual options, I’ve chosen to travel for the in-person sessions in Atlanta, Georgia.
It will be my first in-person conference and my second time traveling via airplane since February 2020. While I’m nervous about the travel and the gathering, I feel confident in the conference’s COVID-19 protocols (requiring full vaccination and boosters, plus indoor masking), in low transmission levels at both my origin and destination, and in my own ability to wear high-quality masks and utilize rapid tests as I go. (I wrote about precautions that I took on my first pandemic-era airplane trip in a post last summer.)
I chose to attend NICAR in-person to better take advantage of data journalism skills sessions—and, of course, in-person networking! If you’re planning to attend and would like to meet up, please reach out: email me, hit me up on Twitter, etc.
Also, for folks attending in-person or tuning in virtually, I’m excited to share that I’ll be a panelist at a conference session discussing the use of data for solutions journalism. The session’s moderator is Matt Kauffman, who leads data reporting at the Solutions Journalism Network. Dedicated readers might remember that the Solutions Journalism Network supported my Opening project last summer; I’ll be discussing my work on that project (which provided lessons from public schools that safely reopened during the 2020-2021 school year) and other solutions-related reporting at this session.
The session is scheduled for next Saturday, March 5, from 3:45 to 5 PM Eastern time, and will be livestreamed for virtual attendees. Here’s the full description:
Solutions journalism is rigorous, evidence-based reporting on responses to social problems. And data make for a great partner in solutions reporting, because when the impact of a response can be measured in numbers, it’s easy to discover the places that stand out and are worth a deeper look.
This session will explore the use of “positive deviants” – outliers in data that might point to a place or a program that has found a better way: the school district that cut the achievement gap by implementing specific policies; the state that applied new protocols in hospitals that significantly reduced the number of women who die in childbirth; the neighborhoods that have reversed environmental injustices and greatly improved urban tree canopy. Stories like these attract readers and viewers, who are increasingly turned off by news coverage focused exclusively on failure.
Adding a solutions lens to traditional investigative reporting leads to better accountability journalism, and data can play a key role in that. This session will present an overview of solutions journalism and positive deviance, followed by tips from a reporter explaining how they used data in pursuit of a timely and critical solutions story: identifying school districts around the country that found ways to safely reopen schools during the pandemic.
COVID-19 Data Dispatch 