Speaker 1: This is Twit.

Speaker 2: So we didn't talk about what you do now, that you're a data journalist. I kind of skipped past that. You were a computer science major at Harvard. And then how did you be, was data journalism a subject at that point?

Speaker 1: No, it wasn't. I really, I wish that it were. So data journalism is a term that dates to about 2006 and it is the current incarnation of what we used to call computer assisted reporting. That was a term that came about in the 80s when reporters all got computers on their desktops for the first time and people started doing reporting with spreadsheets and with databases. And then before that, it was called precision reporting, which actually dates to 1968, which is the first time that the tools of social science were used in investigative reporting. So Phil Meyer, a pioneer in the field, used a mainframe computer to crunch some survey data and do an investigative story about the Detroit race riots. So there's a pretty reasonably long history of using computers for investigative journalism purposes. And so data journalism is the most recent incarnation of that. So what I do is I write computer code in order to commit acts of investigative reporting. I do a kind of reporting that's called algorithmic accountability reporting. And so there are two ways to do it. One way is like what ProPublica does or what Julia Englund does with her new newsroom, The Markup, and that is investigating algorithms, black box algorithms that are used to make decisions on our behalf, right? So that's the compass algorithm or the algorithm that is used to decide if you are worthy of getting a new credit card or the algorithms that decide who gets into which New York City public high school, right? So that's investigating algorithms that are out there. I do the other side of that, which is I write my own algorithms in order to investigate social issues. So it's a relatively new field in the sense that we are using advanced computational methods for investigative journalism nowadays.

Speaker 2: And so you mentioned Julia Englund, who used to be at ProPublica and now started her own thing. And so is that what she used to uncover? I know she was the one that I think uncovered the ads that were racist in Facebook and other things like that. Is that data journalism?

Speaker 1: Yes, yes, that is data journalism and that is algorithmic accountability reporting. And that's a particular strain of it. Sorry, we're getting really wonky here right now. I'm putting on my journalism professor hat. So there are lots of people who are investigating platforms. So tech platforms have all of the same problems that everything else in the real world has, and they need to be held accountable in the same way. So people are starting to do investigative reporting projects on the different tech platforms in order to find out how are these platforms discriminating against citizens? What are the threats to democracy posed by things happening on these platforms? What is illegal activity that's happening on these platforms? So that's a very important function that journalism serves in a democracy is finding these things out. So citizens can be more aware and can be empowered. And so journalists now are looking at tech like we look at anything else in the world and we're saying, okay, let's be realistic about the problems that we find.