1801 newsletter: solar eclipses, whales and Roger Federer as religious experience
Hello, dear readers. I’ve done a bit of thinking, which is dangerous I know, but in future I will try to give space to lesser known publishers of interactives — at least have a balance. And will try to keep it to five examples per week (time is at a premium for both you and I). That being said, I’m going in with NYT, WashPo and The Guardian (Australia) for this edition. Still: it’s worth it. And remember to sign up.
TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART
The Washington Post’s graphics reporter Denise Lu has created a blindingly brilliant piece using the Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses Database. I’m frankly starstruck. Everything else has been put in the shade. They’ve been, uh, eclipsed. Ok, I’ll stop. But what an elegant piece of work this is. On 21 August, a total solar eclipse will be visible from the US. There’s personalisation: enter your year of birth and find out how many eclipses there will likely be in your lifetime. There’s a large rotating globe, similar to the FT’s in my first newsletter, but this one has every future eclipse path laid out (with a colour grade to demarc how soon it will be). A map of the States shows where the total eclipse will pass through, but each other area displaying a tiny eclipse, all with a slightly different level of eclipse. I could go on, but please just go look. This is what it’s about. Now, time for some Bonnie Tyler.
MELTING POINT
The New York Times has something of a monopoly on great interactive work about climate change causing things to melt. 2015’s Greenland Is Melting Away was a landmark piece of work that hasn’t aged at all despite being such a fast-moving sector. They did a VR series on Antarctica. And it has continued with the depressing news that an iceberg weighing more than a trillion metric tons has broken away from the Antarctic Peninsula. There is a crisp, precise explainer map, replete with annotations, an innovative timeline and even the state of Delaware for size comparison. There’s a cool GIF showing the growth of the rift over the years (you may have guessed I like GIFs). Also, Berliner Morgenpost lets you drag the iceberg around the globe to see how big it actually is.
FREE WILLY!
I love The Pudding, run by the guys at Polygraph, because it is ambitious and adventurous. And they clearly have a sense of humour. Their latest is described as “The past, present, and future of captive whales and dolphins according to data and pop culture.” Serious data (how cetaceans have gone from being captured to instead being born in captivity — much better for them) comes cheek-by-jowl with funny movie references (I won’t spoil). The data is available to download via GitHub (OpenData enthusiasts rejoice!) and methodologies are abound. And we have charts showing survival rates that include confidence intervals, even more geeky joy.
TAKING COUNT
The UK’s 2021 census is going to be huge for data and interactive journalists, expect big experimentation, especially now that the 2011 census is getting less and less relevant. Australia has just got its hands on the 2016 census data, and The Guardian’s Nick Evershed has been digging into it. He always puts out great work, ploughing a lone furrow. To begin with, there’s a simple location search with some elegant line charts to go with it. But importantly, there’s also a call for the thoughts of readers: data must be contextualised! Often data reporting lacks case studies to humanise the issue — something I always try to do. Nick has also done some simple but effective geographic analysis looking at topics such as urbanisation, home ownership and immigration.
DOUBLE FAULT
I’m not sure if you heard, but Wimbledon is on at the moment. I have to agree: watching Roger Federer is like a religious experience. But for all McEnroe’s crooning on the BBC, the state of male American is not great at the moment (things are very much different in the female game, as Andy Murray wonderfully pointed out to a reporter). A FiveThirtyEight analysis lays the situation bare, with some excellent dot plot-cum-area chart graphics. One thing they are really great at is keeping visuals to only the essential. You’ll often see a FiveThirtyEight article without any graphics or interactivity — they only use it if visualisation genuinely adds to a story.
FOOD4THOUGHT
I’ve been doing some work on prisons recently, which in the UK are an utter mess. Stories to follow soon, but in the meantime chew on this:
That’s your lot for this week. Please tell me if there’s something you’ve done that I should check out. I love to discover. Likewise, if there’s anything you like or don’t like about this newsletter.
Follow me on Twitter. Email me: peter.g.yeung@gmail.com. Sign yourself up, sign your aunt up, sign your gynaecologist up! And please spread the work because I can’t expand without you, dear reader.
