Kicking off Civic Innovation in Chicago on WBEZ’s Morning Shift

On Wednesday, Smart Chicago Executive Director Dan O’Neil joined WBEZ’s Matthew Green and Tim Akimoff to talk about data journalism. Here’s the broadcast, which started with an amazing in-studio song by Dolly Varden:

Data journalism is the art and science of finding truth through big data produced by the day to day operations of governments and other large entities, then taking that day and using it to tell a story.  Data journalism also involves creating visualizations with data such as WBEZ’s gang map.

The Smart Chicago Collaborative is partnering with WBEZ to not only take part in data journalism, but also to raise awareness of the impact data has on our daily lives.

This will be done through WBEZ’s new data blog Day X Datum as well as by Smart Chicago’s efforts to support civic apps such as Chicago’s flu shot app and Second City Zoning.

Through this effort, Smart Chicago and WBEZ hope to connect the community to data and civic hacking efforts. Smart Chicago encourages those interested in learning how to use data to tell stories and solve civic problems are encouraged to contact the Smart Chicago Collaborative.