Two-Minute Writing Drill: Using Census Data

Two-Minute Writing Drill: Using Census Data

I’m posting early this week because this post can easily give you half a dozen story ideas for each town you cover, and it’s details data that was released last week. This is more of a reporting tip than a writing tip, but it’s worth mentioning as we head into the slow news stretch of the calendar and are scrambling to find stories that keep people talking. The Census Bureau released the 2016 results of its American Community Survey on Dec. 7, and there are a lot of stories to be mined from this data.

And the good news is if you can balance your checkbook, you can probably do the simple math needed to use this valuable resource to show how the communities you cover are changing. The first step is to go to https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml and type in the name of the town you want to look at to start exploring the data available.

In Massachusetts, the two biggest complaints I hear are traffic and housing costs, so I was able to pick off a lot of low-hanging fruit in the towns I cover last week by looking at increasing commute times (here’s an example from Woburn) and increased rent burdens (here’s an example in Salem). I was also able to document an increase in the number of people living below the poverty level in Tewksbury, which, based on Facebook comments, was a surprise for a lot of readers.

Other possible stories:

• Is a town you cover getting long in the tooth? The Census data makes it easy to track median age over time, and you can also see the breakdown by age. A spike in the number of people under the age of five could mean classroom crowding issues in the coming years.
• Pay attention to changes in race and languages spoken at home. It may be too soon to tell from the current data set, but it will be worth looking into changes down the road if a town you cover has declared itself a sanctuary city.
• An increase in the percentage of people with college degrees can be an early indicator that a town or neighborhood is gentrifying.

The key is to use downtime to explore the data and find trends. From a traffic standpoint, the posts have been solid for me so far; they don’t necessarily put up the kind of numbers that justify putting off work on the more tried-and-true posts, but they have been a way to keep busy and keep fresh content in towns where there hasn’t been a lot of news this week.

They also get a lot more engagement: I’m seeing lots of shares, likes and comments of these posts on Facebook and engaged time is significantly higher than my average story.

Here are a couple of pointers for working with the Census data:

• Numbers need a point of comparison. Depending on the stat, the data goes back to 2010 or 2012, so compare stats over time. I have also been including a paragraph on state numbers for whatever data point I’m writing about (just type “Massachusetts” or the state you’re covering into Factfinder) which helps add context to the local numbers.
• Don’t do a one-size-fits-all post for each town you cover. Look for places where there has been a significant change in the numbers in recent years. The traffic stories, for example, were hit or miss: in most of my towns the numbers went up, and the response was either “No, duh” or lots of griping about the worst roads and personal commuting war stories.
• Use the data to surprise readers. This week I’m hoping to post a story in Salem that shows commute times are actually getting better, even though most people assume they are getting worse.
• You’ll notice for the most part I just posted the data to get people talking. The hope is that talk will lead to a lot of follow-up stories. For example, in Wilmington, the traffic story had a lot of people complaining that the town is being overbuilt, which is contributing to the problem. And the census data confirms that there is a lot of new housing popping up in Wilmington in the past few years, which is another Census post I hope to get to this week.

Want to get even more sophisticated? See this great post from Source.