Data journalism. One of the biggest trends in reporting right now but often a misunderstood science. When people think about a data journalist, images of a man or woman with thick glasses and a pocket protector furiously tapping into a calculator often springs to mind. But of course, anyone who knows or works with a data journalist understands that these stereotypes are untrue. Data journalists are storytellers at heart, guided by the unquestionable logic of data and driven to uncover trends and insights revealed by quantitative analysis.
For the past year and a half, Communiqué PR has had the pleasure of working with a data journalist spearheading research and writing stories about trends in senior care and housing. Ben Hanowell, whose official title is lead researcher and data journalist at A Place for Mom (APFM) – the nation’s largest senior living referral service – was kind enough to spend some time speaking to me about his role at the company and how he came into his profession. Luckily, no pocket protector was seen during the discussion.
Questions & Answers
So, Ben, in your own words, can you tell me what a data journalist is exactly? What is it that you do?
A data journalist is someone who uses the analysis of data to directly tell stories that are of interest to the broader public. So, while traditional reporter might rely more on access to key stakeholders or shoe leather reporting – going out on the street and asking a few people their thoughts on the issue of the day – a data journalist will instead find a data set that is relevant to whatever topic they are trying to cover and they will use their quantitative analysis capabilities to analyze that data set. Then they will use their writing capabilities to make their analysis something that the public can understand and wants to read.
Did you always want to become a data journalist? What did you study in School?
Well, I’ll just preface this by saying that when I was 6 years old, what I really wanted to be was the first Egyptologist to win an Academy Award, but that didn’t pan out. So, my major in college was anthropology and I went to graduate school and studied bio-cultural anthropology, but I also studied game theory. Game theory is a branch of economics that uses economic models to understand how people will optimize their behavior in the presence of other people who are also trying to optimize their behavior. I also studied demography, which is the study of populations, in particular their death rates, birth rates, and migration rates. All of that was pretty quantitative, so that is where I learned statistics. I found when you try to communicate any quantitative analysis to anybody who is not themselves a quantitative analyst, you’ve got to figure out a way to make the story interesting. So that is what motivated me to learn how to write about data analysis and also how to visualize data, make it look pretty.
At APFM, what are your main responsibilities as a data journalist?
I use company and public data to tell compelling stories that serve three aims. One is to build valuable links back to our website from reputable news sites, which is a search engine optimization strategy. So the idea is that we do some piece of analysis that is newsworthy, we work with CPR to pitch that news to reporters – either as a contributed article or something that they can cover on their own – they link back to the original piece of research or asset that we created around this analysis and, because news organizations have high domain authority, especially major national outlets, that boosts our ranking in search engines.
Another reason they created a data journalist role is because the mission of APFM – and I think this is the most important reason – is to serve the noble mission of senior living. Searching for senior living is a major emotional and financial decision, and families need good information about the market so they can make decisions as efficiently as possible. We can use our data, along with some public data, to build things like our Senior Living Cost Index, which tells people what senior living costs look like in over 2,000 cities and metropolitan areas in the United States.
Then there is a third reason they created the data journalist role and that is – since not only are we serving the noble mission of senior living for consumers but we also want to work well with our community partners – to generate new insights about the senior living market to help them serve consumers better, and also to help their businesses thrive and more effectively manage the referrals that we send them. So those are the three things I do as a data journalist, but then there are the other cool things I get to do. For example, I get to have interviews with national and local reporters – that is really fun – and I also get to analyze a lot of data, which I love doing.
How do you see your role at APFM evolving in the future?
Another reason APFM hired a data journalist is that they want to build a sense of credibility, a real credibility, and to build a brand as an authority on the senior living industry, and one way to do that is through rigorous analysis. So I hope that, as we continue to do that and we have these incremental successes, that we can eventually grow the team to have, not only people that are data journalists like myself, but traditional reporters. One thing I would love to do is have people team up with a traditional reporter and we could tell both the human side of the story — the qualitative side of the story — and the data side of the story. One good example of that is right now we are going to pitch this story around Valentine’s Day that has to do with love and marriage after 65. One of our contributors went around and interviewed people at senior living communities, on the ground shoe leather reporting, to try and get the human side of the story. I, in the meanwhile, am doing some analysis of our data and public data surrounding marriage and divorce and co-habitation among people who are older adults. Imagine if we could put those two things together from the start and really tell a compelling story that would really speak to major podcasts like This American Life. That would really develop a lot of brand awareness around APFM, and links and credibility.
A special thanks to Ben for taking the time to speak with me for this blog post and for his ongoing mission to uncover helpful information for the senior living community. In a follow-up discussion about the blog post, Ben said he would “totally rock a pocket protector,” and reflecting on his responses to our questions, he asked, “Do I really say the word ‘really’ that much?”