Six free data journalism projects for beginners

This week and next we are posting six projects from MMJ Masterclass 20: Getting started in data journalism.

They'll go live, one a day, and will be available to non-subscribers for 24 hours each. Subscribers get them for free in perpetuity.

To subscribe, buy the book from Amazon, which costs you around £24 in the UK, $45 in the USA, and gives you full access to the book's extensive companion website and makes you a part of the MMJ community.

UK link here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Multimedia-Journalism-Andy-Bull/dp/0415478235/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1296119153&sr=1-1

Here's the run down on the projects:
Project 1: Factual, Excel and Many Eyes, a beginner's guide to finding, sifting and visualising data using these three tools: Free Wednesday only, still here for subscribers: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1271
Project 2: Socrata: An all-in-one data discovery and mapping tool. Posting on Thursday here: http://bit.ly/gag6qf
Project 3: Guardian Data, Google Spreadsheets and Mapalist: Posting on Friday here: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1274
Project 4 Tableau, a multi-visualisation data tool for non-programmers. Posting on Saturday:  http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1298
Project 5: Scraperwiki. Posting on Sunday: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1299
Project 6: Plaintext visualisations with Many Eyes, Tableizer and Wordle. Posting Monday here: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1319

Preview of Masterclass 20: Getting started in data journalism

Turning spreadsheet data into maps is a useful skill for the multimedia journalist.

Among the many data tools we'll give tutorials on in Masterclass 20, which goes live on January 26, will be MapAList, which can take your Google spreadsheets and turn them into maps.

Click and zoom on the map below for details on all the WWII prisoner of war camps in the UK.

The data came from English Heritage, and was originally published by The Guardian.