Introduction: 

As you might have figured out from the previous assignments, there is more information about various kinds of organization than you can shake a stick at online. The question is how you go about making sure that you get the right information, and how you can use it to tell a story.

Learning objectives:

• Finding information online
• Analyzing such information effectively
• Displaying information to tell interesting or surprising stories

Steps to completion:

Background:

• Go to GuideStar and register for a (free) account. I will assign you a Division I conference. Navigate to the page for that conference and find its most recent IRS form 990 and write up the following information using TablePress. Post it in the Module 3 category with the tag “conference” by Sept. 5.
  • Name of conference
  • Year of report
  • Revenue broken out by source
  • Expenses broken out by type
  • Distributions to members
  • Salary of commissioner
  • Names, titles, and salaries of 2 employees with the highest pay
• I also will assign you a team from UGA, Georgia Tech, Georgia State, or Georgia Southern. Go to Open Georgia and find names, titles, and salaries for all coaches affiliated directly with that team. Create a second table using TablePress and post it in the Module 3 category with the tag “team” also by Sept. 5.
• Read the following articles:
  • Tufte
  • Visualizing Trouble
  • Cairo
• Find a story that uses infographics and data to tell a story. The New York Times’ Upshot vertical and FiveThirtyEight are good sources. Write a blog post in the Module 3 category explaining how that story uses or fails to use the principles discussed in the Tufte, HBR, and/or Cairo articles, using the tag “graphics principles” by Sept. 7.
• Working with classmates I will assign, develop two graphics, one comparing conference financial positions and the other comparing team salaries, using the tool of your choice. Post it in the Module 3 category with the tag “conference graphic” or “team graphic” as appropriate by Sept. 12.
• Read the following two articles from The Chronicle of Higher Education (you may need to be on campus to access):
  • The $10 Billion Sports Tab
  • Confessions of a Fixer
• Come up with three questions for author Brad Wolverton about these two projects, especially about how he reported them, organized the information he came across, and particularly in the context of the sports tab story, how the team found stories in the data and presented them. Tweet at him (@bradwolverton) using the #gradysports_e hashtag by Sept. 14.

Reflective:

• Class discussion Sept. 6: Conference and team comparisons
• Class discussion Sept. 8: Conceptualizing graphics for conferences and teams//story memos
• Class discussion Sept. 13: Visualizing graphics
• Class discussion Sept. 15: Brad Wolverton: reporting with data and people

Exploratory

• Develop a story memo for your personal project, laying out the key questions you want to ask and how you plan to answer them, i.e. the basic structure of your main story and the complementary elements you envision, i.e. graphics, multimedia, sidebars, etc. Post to your personal page using the “personal story memo” tag by Sept. 16.