In an age where data is an important part of impactful storytelling, journalists need tools that enable them to work with it effectively. Python is a powerful resource for analyzing and visualizing data, but it can be intimidating for those without a technical background. This workshop breaks down those barriers, showing how AI tools like ChatGPT can make coding basics approachable and accessible. By equipping journalists with these skills, the workshop aims to empower them to create richer, data-driven stories and visualisations without relying heavily on external technical support.
The session will start with an overview of Python and how AI-assisted coding works, showcasing how these tools can simplify technical challenges, followed by real-life examples. Afterward, participants will dive into a hands-on session using Jupyter Notebook to practice running and adapting Python scripts. By the end, they’ll feel more confident tackling technical problems independently.
Participants are encouraged to have Python (with Jupyter Notebook) installed on their devices, or a Google Collab environment ready. You will also need a ChatGPT account set up before attending. While familiarity with Python is helpful, it’s not required.
Data journalists have traditionally thought of maps and spatial calculations as a job for special mapping software, like QGIS. But it's often more efficient to do GIS work in the script in which you perform the rest of your analysis.
In this class, you will see how easy it is to work with maps within your code.
The class will be taught in R, so some familiarity is recommended, but the skills are generic to all languages.
Lots of data and investigative journalism takes place in spreadsheets. Frequently, we want to perform a task for every row in our spreadsheet. For instance, we may have cells containing:
- Quotes from a speech by a European politician that we want to classify into “Pro-EU”, “Anti-EU” or “Neutral”
- Company annual reports from which we want to extract the ultimate controlling party
- Political ads which we want to sift according to whether they mention immigration, directly or indirectly
In this session, participants will learn to write a custom AppScript function in Google Sheets that will enable them to apply Large Language Models (LLMs) from OpenAI and Anthropic to their spreadsheet data.
By the end, attendees will be able to write a formula like =LLM(A1, “gpt-4o”, “Is this text about immigration?”), then drag it down to apply it to hundreds of rows at once. This will enable us to apply the astonishing natural language capabilities of LLMs en masse to cells within our spreadsheet.
Attendees will acquire the following skills:
- Using AppScript to write custom functions in Google Sheets
- Using LLMs via APIs
- Some basic LLM prompting techniques and tips
- Understanding when an LLM is likely to be reliable (when its output is based entirely on data within the spreadsheet) and when it is more likely to hallucinate (when its output draws on its own limited knowledge of the world)
You've just obtained a big dataset. Where do you begin? How do you find the story buried within the rows and columns?
In this session, you will learn how to quickly become familiar with your data by making a series of charts that will illustrate not just the contents of your data but unveil patterns that can help guide your reporting.
This class will be taught in R, so some familiarity is recommended, but the skills are common to all languages.
What if you could harness AI to automate repetitive tasks, extract meaningful insights from complex datasets, or even assist in storytelling? In this session, you’ll learn how to create practical, customizable workflows—“AI recipes”—designed to tackle real newsroom challenges.
Drawing inspiration from cutting-edge techniques in AI agent design, we’ll guide you through building tools that can annotate maps, analyze documents, and much more. Whether you’re a data journalist, editor, or simply curious about the potential of AI, this session will provide hands-on insights to integrate AI agents into your work.
