Sarah Cohen (journalist)

Cohen received an A.B. in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduation, she worked as an economist (1980-1991) for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1991 she returned to school at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism, graduate program in public affairs reporting, and received her M.A. in journalism in 1992.^[1][5]

Cohen gained her first work experience, as a reporter, at The Tampa Tribune. She spent two years at the Tribune, before leaving to work for The St. Petersburg Times, where she worked as a reporter from 1994 to 1996.^[5]

in 1996, Cohen began a long record of service, working in different positions with the nonprofit organization, Investigative Reporters and Editors. She was the Training Director at the IRE from 1996-1998. From 2010-2018, she served as a member of the Board of Directors, including time as president.^[7][8]

During the same time, she worked as a reporter and database editor at The Washington Post, (1999-2009) then leaving to teach at Duke University, (2009-2012) where she was the Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy.^[9] In 2012, Cohen joined The New York Times, as editor for computer-assisted reporting.^[5] She remained at the Times until 2017, before leaving to go back to teaching, as the Knight Chair, at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, in Phoenix, Arizona.^[1]

Cohen on data-driven reporting

in 2002, Scott Maier, wrote a short review about two books, including one that Cohen authored: "Numbers in the Newsroom: Using Math and Statistics in News." In his concluding remarks, he said that "all journalists need math."^[10] That conclusion is what Sarah Cohen emphasizes in interviews, training sessions, and in the courses that she teaches. She explains that "data journalism helps keep the work responsible which, in turn, contributes to credibility," especially in the current time of watchdog journalism, or accountability reporting.^[11]

Throughout her career, Cohen's work has been largely focused on data gathering and the use of computer-assisted journalism. Her methods have enabled her to "cut through a lot of clutter and display data in a more efficient way." In a 2009 interview, with Steve Myers, with the Poynter Institute, she gave examples to his question as to how a visual representation of data can help a reporter.^[12]

One example she used was how data can tell a reporter where to look for the story. She was with the Washington Post when they began to look at farm subsidies and who was receiving the money. Cohen explained :

"During a [2003] story on disaster payments in the farm subsidy system, we wanted to make sure that we went to places that had received the payments year after year after year. Using a database, we could find farms that had received multiple payments pretty easily. But looking at repeated images of density maps that I made of the payments, it was really obvious where to go — specific areas of North Dakota and Kansas."^[12][13]

In another example, where the data appeared to point to what might have been a serious problem, involving deaths at a detention center; a closer look at the data showed that there just happened to be more sick people who were sent there, negating the need to cover the story. She described what happened:

"Last year, [2006] when two reporters here were working on a story on deaths in detention centers, I made a simple Flash interactive that let them look at deaths on a map by age group, cause of death, year and a couple of other variables. It helped to be able to see whether certain kinds of deaths were centered in certain areas. It also helped show that what appeared to be a site of many deaths was really one where they sent very, very ill people, making it far less newsworthy and obvious that they should focus somewhere else."^[12][14]

Cohen says that as a street reporter, one must be familiar with public records, both in how to find them and how to make the correct requests, in order to use what is needed for data purposes. She stresses that as a reporter, you need to understand what to ask for.^[15] Additionally, Cohen doesn't think most reporters need to be experts but, they need to be "conversant with a spreadsheet."^[16]

Investigative and public affairs reporters are increasingly fact-checking to strengthen accountability, which requires training and resources. As newsrooms continue to cut staff, the need for reporters who can use data to help them with stories, is becoming more important as data-driven journalism becomes standard practice in most newspapers and news organizations.^[17][18]

Discover more about Career related topics

The Tampa Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

The Tampa Tribune was a daily newspaper published in Tampa, Florida. Along with the competing Tampa Bay Times, the Tampa Tribune was one of two major newspapers published in the Tampa Bay area.

Investigative Reporters and Editors

Investigative Reporters and Editors

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. (IRE) is a nonprofit organization that focuses on improving the quality of journalism, in particular investigative journalism. Formed in 1975, it presents the IRE Awards and holds conferences and training classes for journalists. Its headquarters is in Columbia, Missouri, at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. It is the largest and oldest association of investigative journalism.

The Washington Post

The Washington Post

The Washington Post is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area.

Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James Buchanan Duke established The Duke Endowment and the institution changed its name to honor his deceased father, Washington Duke.

Computer-assisted reporting

Computer-assisted reporting

Computer-assisted reporting describes the use of computers to gather and analyze the data necessary to write news stories.

Poynter Institute

Poynter Institute

The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a non-profit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The school is the owner of the Tampa Bay Times newspaper and the International Fact-Checking Network. It also operates PolitiFact.

Agricultural subsidy

Agricultural subsidy

An agricultural subsidy is a government incentive paid to agribusinesses, agricultural organizations and farms to supplement their income, manage the supply of agricultural commodities, and influence the cost and supply of such commodities.

North Dakota

North Dakota

North Dakota is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, South Dakota to the south, and Montana to the west. It is believed to host the geographic center of North America, Rugby, and is home to the tallest man-made structure in the Western Hemisphere, the KVLY-TV mast.

Kansas

Kansas

Kansas is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named after the Kansas River, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native Americans who lived along its banks. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the (south) wind" although this was probably not the term's original meaning. For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison.

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Flash displays text, vector graphics, and raster graphics to provide animations, video games, and applications. It allows streaming of audio and video, and can capture mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera input.

Spreadsheet

Spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in cells of a table. Each cell may contain either numeric or text data, or the results of formulas that automatically calculate and display a value based on the contents of other cells. The term spreadsheet may also refer to one such electronic document.

• 2001 Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal for "The District's Lost Children," with the staff of The Washington Post^[19]
• 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting with the staff of The Washington Post, for a series that exposed the District of Columbia's role in the neglect and death of 229 children placed in protective care between 1993 and 2000, which prompted an overhaul of the city's child welfare system^[20]
• 2002 Robert F. Kennedy Award in Journalism for "The District's Lost Children," with the staff of The Washington Post^[21]
• 2005 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting with the staff of The Washington Post, for their series exposing lead contamination in the District of Columbia water supply^[22]
• 2009 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting for "Forced Out," with the staff of The Washington Post, for their reporting on how Washington, D.C. landlords drove hundreds of tenants from rent-controlled apartments^[23]
• 2016 Gerald Loeb Award for Images/Graphics/Interactives, with the team members of The New York Times, "Making Data Visual,"^[24]