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How to (not) write about numbers

Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · 6d

How to (not) write about numbers onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/09/30/h...

Image by Andy Maguire | CC BY 2.0 If you’ve been working on a story involving data, the temptation can be to throw all the figures you’ve found into the resulting report — but the same …

Freedom of Information in the news – week ending 29/8/2025

Reposted by Paul Bradshaw

Claire Miller @clairemiller.bsky.social · Sep 2

Crime on buses is thankfully pretty uncommon.

But which routes in the West Midlands are the worst affected according to #FOI:

A refused or unanswered Freedom of Information request can still be a story. (But there's some successes too...

clairemiller.net

A field rant about shortcuts, ego, and other creative ways to waste everyone’s timeLet’s just say the quiet part out loud: most of what’s sold as “OSINT” online is cosplay. It’s people screenshotting ...

Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Aug 29

“Maintain a kill checklist. Try to kill your own finding. Publish what survived.” And many other tips
www.dutchosintguy.com/post/stop-ca...

Stop Calling It OSINT

www.dutchosintguy.com

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Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Aug 17

“GPT-5, even in ‘Thinking’ and ‘Pro’ modes, was a considerable downgrade when compared with the capabilities demonstrated by GPT o4-mini-high”

www.bellingcat.com/resources/20...

LLMs vs. Geolocation: GPT-5 performs worse than other AI models - bellingcat

Bellingcat challenged the latest models—Grok, GPT and Gemini—on geolocation tasks, revealing GPT-5 as a clear downgrade.

www.bellingcat.com

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Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Aug 6

Stop anthropomorphising AI. It’s not “biased” in the way you think.
onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/05/07/w...

Why I’m no longer saying AI is “biased”

TLDR; Saying “AI has biases” or “biased training data” is preferable to “AI is biased” because it reduces the risk of anthropomorphism and focuses on potential s…

Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Apr 14

Kiss-ass is a great term. I have been calling it over-positivity but ass-kissing is better

Google Sheets has a new AI function — how does it perform on classification tasks?

Reposted by Paul Bradshaw

Medical Journalists' Association @mja-uk.bsky.social · Apr 11

2. Learn about in-depth investigations from journalists @theguardian.com and @theexamination.org

3. Hone your data skills with @paulbradshaw.bsky.social and the power of story-telling from @healthequals.bsky.social

4. Hear the economic case for reducing inequalities from @davefinch.bsky.social

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Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Apr 10

A new AI function is being added to Google Sheets that could make most other functions redundant. But is it any good? Here’s what I’ve learned in the first week…

onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/04/10/g...

A new AI function is being added to Google Sheets that could make most other functions redundant. But is it any good? And what can it be used for? Here’s what I’ve learned in the first week… AI has…

How do I get data if my country doesn’t publish any?

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Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Apr 2

🤐 If you can't get access to public data, or information provided by the authorities is not credible, what do you do, how do you obtain data for a story?
Here are some techniques used by reporters around the world

onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/03/25/h...

Spotlight photo by Paul Green on Unsplash In many countries public data is limited, and access to data is either restricted, or information provided by the authorities is not credible. So how do yo…

The blond advantage: fair hair completely changed my life – but is it time to give it up?

Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Mar 18

I wonder how much fun the writer/sub had identifying when to use blond vs blonde in this piece. Either way, it’s a great example (replace them all with blanks for a cruel subbing test) www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

When I first dyed my hair, the difference in how I was treated made me assume life got better the more you lightened your look. I have now spent years testing the theory ...

www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Paul Bradshaw

Martin Stabe @martinstabe.ft.com · Mar 13

Further important 🐹📈 data journalism from @louisashworth.bsky.social and cartography from @theboysmithy.ft.com about the cost of small caged mammals (scm) in the UK: www.ft.com/content/f1cb...

A grid map showing the regional variation in the changing cost of small caged mammels in the uk.

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Reposted by Paul Bradshaw

Claire Miller @clairemiller.bsky.social · Mar 13

Scottish public bodies have been warned not to take #FOI court action they are likely to lose…advice that could probably apply more widely.

FOI stories that mostly avoided this this week...

Freedom of Information in the news – week ending 25/10/2024 – #FOIFriday – Words + Numbers

Post published:October 25, 2024 Post category:Freedom of Information Reading time:8 mins read Freedom of Information in the news – week ending 25/10/2024 – #FOIFriday Scottish public bodies have been warned not to take court action they are likely to lose…advice that would probably apply to pu...

clairemiller.net

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Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Mar 6

Important reporting by my colleague Alex Homer on police use of a Clearing House-style #FOI unit.
Journalists identified, potential media attention discussed, and forces advised to withdraw previous response

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Police FOI unit dubbed 'authoritarian censor'

Campaigners voice concern as an investigation shows a police unit blocked requests for information.

www.bbc.co.uk

Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Mar 6

It doesn’t look at change, so it doesn’t say they become more distrustful, no - more that audiences assess news critically in general

Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Mar 6

Research: people are “better at rating false news as false than at rating true news as true”
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Spotting false news and doubting true news: a systematic review and meta-analysis of news judgements - Nature Human Behaviour

Pfänder and Altay conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of 67 experimental articles, showing that people discern true from false news with ease. When making mistakes, people err on the side of...

www.nature.com

Submissions Open for 2025 Sigma Awards, GIJN New Host of Data Journalism Award

Reposted by Paul Bradshaw

Global Investigative Journalism Network @gijn.org · Mar 4

‼️ DEADLINE EXTENSION!

🏆 Sigma Awards 2025

As with previous editions, the award will maintain its no-category rule and will have experts in data journalism from around the world constituting its jury and prize committee.

Deadline: March 7, 2025
More: https://twp.ai/1TaJrR

GIJN is proud to announce that it is the new administrator for the annual SIGMA data journalism awards, which are now accepting submissions for the 2025 round.

twp.ai

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Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Feb 19

I’ve put together a crib sheet of 7 techniques for journalists to get better results from genAI tools

onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/02/19/7...

7 prompt design techniques for generative AI every journalist should know

Tools like ChatGPT might seem to speak your language, but they actually speak a language of probability and educated guesswork. You can make yourself better understood — and get more professional r…

Birmingham is not just heavy metal

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Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Feb 13

I’m speaking at this event on AI and inclusive journalism next Wednesday if you fancy tuning/popping in (New Broadcasting House, London)

Ai and the future of inclusive journalism

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Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Feb 9

Great piece on the artistic history of Birmingham and where to find the buildings that reflect it
open.substack.com/pub/birmingh...

How the Arts and Crafts movement merged industry with artisan

open.substack.com

DeepSeek might not be such good news for energy after all

Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Feb 4

“The issue might be that the energy it saves in training is offset by its more intensive techniques for answering questions, and by the long answers they produce.”

www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/31/1...

New figures show that if the model’s energy-intensive “chain of thought” reasoning gets added to everything, the promise of efficiency gets murky.

www.technologyreview.com

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Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Feb 3

7 vinklene (angles). På norsk!
onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/02/03/d...

De vanligste vinklene journalister bruker når de forteller historier med data

Datadrevet historiefortelling kan deles i syv hovedkategorier ifølge en analyse av 200 artikler. I den første av to poster vil jeg demonstrere de fire mest brukte vinklene i nyhetshistorier, hvorda…

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Paul Bradshaw @paulbradshaw.bsky.social · Jan 30

Haha! Certainly whether a presenter born in the 1930s can adapt to a 2020s world.