The Data-Driven Reporting Project

Dana Amihere is a designer, developer and data journalist. She’s committed to solutions reporting that centers racial and social justice, especially through data-driven storytelling. Amihere left newsrooms in 2021 to start Code Black Media, a digital media consultancy that lives at the intersection of data, design and equity. She previously worked in data reporting, interactive design and news apps development for 89.3 LAist, The Dallas Morning News, Pew Research Center and The Baltimore Sun.

Amihere has taught data journalism and interaction design at conferences and colleges across the country.

AmyJo Brown is a consulting editor who helps local news organizations tell stories that carry weight, focusing not just on the external work – the stories that publish – but also on how our industry does it work. A veteran journalist with a background in local government and investigative reporting, her focus on improving processes and changing systems has carried through her work with news leaders on editorial strategies, building data tools, working with young journalists and leading collaborative journalism projects. She is also a 2022-2023 Knight Lab Professional Fellow at Northwestern University's Medill School.

Haru Coryne is a data reporter for ProPublica, based in Chicago. They use a combination of statistical methods, computer software and document-based research to find stories in large troves of information. A former real estate reporter for The Real Deal, they are especially interested in housing, business and economic development.

Dhrumil Mehta is an Associate Professor of Journalism at Columbia University and the Assistant Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. He teaches courses in Columbia’s three-semester Data Journalism M.S. program and is also a Visiting Associate Professor in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Previously, Dhrumil was a Database Journalist at FiveThirtyEight, where he built databases, scrapers, bots, and interactive graphics alongside reporting and writing about elections, public opinion and media.

David McKie is the deputy managing editor for Canada’s National Observer. Before joining the Observer, the Ottawa-based, award-winning journalist and author spent 26 years honing his skills at the CBC as an investigative producer and reporter. David teaches data journalism at Carleton University, the University of King’s College, and Toronto Metropolitan University. He has and has co-authored three journalism textbooks and two user guides on freedom-of-information laws and privacy, respectively.

Valérie Ouellet is an award-winning investigative reporter based in Toronto. She uses her data analysis and coding skills to find exclusive stories for Canada’s national public broadcaster, CBC News. In 2022, she was awarded the prestigious St. Clair Balfour Fellowship with Massey College at the University of Toronto. She has won an Amnesty International Media Award for documenting COVID cases in Canadian jails (2021) and the RTDNA Dan McArthur Award for shedding light on Ontario’s broken school violence reporting system (2020). She was a two-time contributor to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on worldwide projects The Implant Files (2018) and The Paradise Papers (2017).

Jeremy Singer-Vine is the director of the Data Liberation Project and author of the Data Is Plural newsletter. From 2014 through 2021, he served as the data editor for BuzzFeed News. Previously, he worked at The Wall Street Journal and, before that, at Slate Magazine.

Francisco Vara-Orta brings nearly two decades of newsroom experience to his role as IRE's first director of diversity and inclusion. Vara-Orta first joined the IRE staff in February 2019 as a training director. While working as a trainer, he has conducted sessions on managing data and investigative reporting for journalists across the United States and internationally. He has worked for a variety of online and print publications, including Chalkbeat, Education Week, the San Antonio Express-News, Austin Business Journal, Los Angeles Business Journal and the Los Angeles Times. He earned a master’s degree in investigative/data journalism at the University of Missouri and a bachelor’s degree from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, where he is now based again. As a gay Mexican-American raised in a single-parent Catholic working-class household, he prizes the stories all around us and thinks everyone has one to tell.

Lisa Waananen Jones is a non-tenure track associate professor of journalism and media production at The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, where she specializes in data reporting and visualization, visual communication, and rural journalism. She was part of the New York Times team awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Derek Willis is a lecturer in data and computational journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Previously he worked as a news applications developer at ProPublica, The New York Times and the Washington Post. He has been a reporter at several other news organizations and is the co-founder of OpenElections, a project that collects and converts official precinct election results.