1/ When you were young, you often scraped bugs off your windshield. Now you rarely use those gas station squeegee sticks. I didn’t even think about this gradual change until reading Crossings. This is a fascinating book on the intersection of infrastructure & ecology. @bengoldfarb.bsky.social

So much fun to guest judge this @upenn.edu data contest led by @mrarenge.bsky.social. Fascinating: there are more accidents on @philadelphiaeagles.bsky.social game days compared to similar days without. But actually fewer drunk driving crashes! (Probably because more people are out & about)

1/5 Behind the story: @nbcnews.com-owned stations have a team of 28 producers who only answer calls/emails from viewers. Many of these stories end up NOT being stories at all- often NBC will call about a consumer complaint and suddenly it gets resolved! www.nbcsandiego.com/video/videos...

1/5 Follow. The. Money. If you missed this #NICAR26 talk I suggest taking a look at these slides as there's a lot of great data out there on government contracts. tinyurl.com/NICAR26-cont...

Indianapolis has a fun vibe

Behind the story: 14 stations collaborated on this project. 🙌 Coincidentally, I taught a spreadsheets course at #NICAR26 on the same day that this spreadsheet project aired after weeks in the making! Tune in tonight to @nbcnews.com-owned stations for the local version of how to save time & money.

R folks listening to this morning's #NICAR26 session on extracting data from documents and - importantly! - how to check your results: You can set up and run evaluations of LLM results with the {vitals} #rstats 📦 www.infoworld.com/ar...#NICAR26#rstats#DDJ

This is neat: Visualping can monitor websites and has a free journalist plan! @azmatzahra.bsky.social used this in her Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation that found unreported civilian casualties. #NICAR26

Thank you, Laura for doing all this! So many awesome speakers.

I'm just a person reading your online tutorial begging you to use a real data set. There's a reason law schools teach with real cases and business schools use stories of real companies. It's the best way to learn.

1/8 So you're excited to go to the @ire.org 2026 NICAR data journalism conference! And you want to follow all the speakers online. This tutorial will show you how do this quickly with #Rstats and @bsky.app. schedules.ire.org/nicar-2026/#/

Oliver argues that nothing can be done but I respectfully disagree. Most of the $44 billion Musk borrowed to buy Twitter will never be repaid as the site doesn't actually make much money. Banks have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to get back the money that they lend out.

1/7 Beyond grateful to be part of this wonderful team who received a 2026 DuPont-Columbia award. @columbiajournalism.bsky.social selected 15 among ~500 entries. Thanks to @parksdigsin.bsky.social, Scott, and the @nbcdfw.com crew! (This is roughly equivalent to a Pulitzer for my print friends!)

Behind the story: I looked at Google political ad data for this @nbcnews.com WNBC story but... I couldn't find any. Though Adams spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on digital consultants. In fact, there were a lot of things we didn't find. Full story here: www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/e...

Fascinating study on why kids think sports is fun. Winning comes in #40 out of 81. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... @avinashsc.com @seeinclearly.bsky.social @drkam.bsky.social

At our Olympic preview meeting, @nbc-sports.bsky.social said this would be the first year that hockey players would be miked up at the Olympics. Not sure who does our bleeping, but they need a raise.

Planning things for 2026 and realized this year: ➡️will be the 20th anniversary of my graduation from journalism school at American ➡️the annual conference for @ire.org will also also be in DC! It's been a wild ride, but it feels appropriate to head back to Washington for journalism. I'm excited.🤓

1/6 Today is the Mondayest Monday of the year. I have calculated this. It is the darkest and it is the coldest. Okay, actually if you want to be technical, the two Mondays before and after December 21, the winter equinox, are the darkest... 

We need an update to “Shaniqua don’t live here no more”: Man, can’t you just leave me alone? Had this cell 20+ years, this is my phone! This game is lame ‘cause you still don’t know my name. Feel the phone buzz all night all day because You found this line from Yellow Pages in ‘99.

🤓This year I read 17,162 pages in 53 books. Below is a thread of what I liked and what I didn't. What should I read next year #booksky?

This didn't make my top 2025 posts, but I think deserves an honorable mention as it got the most re-shares. We need to rethink our current communication architecture, or we will continue to reward conspiracy theories over quality content. (please excuse typo below- should read "the president")

My top 10 posts of the year:

I do a lot with legal data, so as you can imagine I love this nonprofit! They can add to this list reporting for @nbcnews.com-owned stations. If anyone has a good tutorial for their new API, please send it, as I have yet use it much. Fantastic resource if you are interested in federal court data.

You have to be a journalist or an attorney? Why not both?

Here's my hot take on Christmas. 🎄

👀🔍🎇 ICMI: This is one of the most thrilling/challenging datasets. There are 98 different sheets you can mix and match. For example: there's a case sheet, and each case has several motions, etc. Huge thanks to @shelbybremer.bsky.social (cited below) for putting a face to this anonymous data!

1/7 Behind the story: calculating all the numbers behind this @nbcnews.com story took three months, 1,181 lines of code, and three former court employees to verify the methodology. @joemurph.bsky.social @suzgamboa.bsky.social @joyywang.bsky.social www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Informal poll: how old were you the first time you took public transportation by yourself? How did you learn the system?

Very cool to see the @pwhlsceptres.bsky.social started a book club! Our local women's hockey league actually also has a book club! Here's what we have read so far. What should we read next? 💙📚 🏒🙌

1/4 Behind the story: Reporter Tony Pipitone found "Florida Soft-Sided Facility South" in this data. Hint: the sign outside has a different name. He compared the governor's comments to this data, released through a FOIA suit. Check out this story with the results: www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/s...

New from @sciam.bsky.social: the article talks about Holland and I understand that because they are several standard deviations above everyone else. For comparison: about 1% of US travel is by bike. But I have to hand it to the Swiss! Biking in a country with that many mountains is impressive.

Critics rave: “SPELL-binding.”

Yet another reason to be grateful for modern engineering: 17% of all medieval cathedrals ultimately collapsed.

Let's say you make a shirt that brings value to your customers over other brands- it's trendier, or better quality etc. You sell more shirts and make more money. What if we could design an internet that incentivizes information over emotion? www.niemanlab.org/2022/07/can-...

Fantastic FOIA find.🔎

1/5: Fascinating: researchers recruited elite basketball players, avid basketball fans, and regular folks to predict who would make a basket in a series of videos showing people about to shoot. Players were much better at successfully predicting this. Even over “expert” watchers

Wow commute times in NYC are solidly twice per year what they are in any other major city. I would take an hour on a train though over half that in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Created in #rstats using @kylewalker.bsky.social's #tidycensus

Ha! Now you definitely have to give the miniseries version a try. Anything less would shortchange the brilliance of Jane Austen. For example, Firth in the Pemberly scene is the awkwardness and hilarity of all of us stumbling upon, and trying to impress, our crush.

1/9 Fascinating book on a little-studied slice of sociology: the intersection of politics, race, suburbanization, & America’s largest church. This is probably particularly interesting for Catholics but some good food for thought for anyone hoping to understand how the US has changed. 📚💙

1/6 The irony of Pride & Prejudice is that Jane Austen never married the man she loved because of the prejudice she faced. She had little $, his family didn't approve. If only she could've made a living as a writer. After all she did create some of the most enduring works of English literature.💙📚

To get an idea of the sheer scale of this change. 👇 Props to the reporters who were not allowed to film inside the courthouse but still managed to get some key glimpses of what is happening behind closed doors.

To produce this @nbcsandiego.com piece, reporters attended over 400 immigration court hearings, talked to dozens of witnesses, and I spent weeks analyzing millions of rows of case data. If you watch/read just one news story today, may I humbly suggest this: www.nbcsandiego.com/news/investi...

1/12 Really interesting book on the foundations of our federal fiscal fiasco. I get that reading a book on tax policy sounds boring. But actually, this was really well-written and eye-opening. I suggest reading the whole thing but a few highlights: 📚💙 🧵👇

There are a lot of great posts out there that aren't very highly ranked. Don't rely on bluesky to find you great content; you can find it on your own! Here's how: #Rstats via @northeasternu.bsky.social's Storybench www.storybench.org/how-to-analy...

Shout out to this librarian who had the perfect Halloween costume for spotting among the stacks. @columbuslibrary.bsky.social

Some really great journalism out of @nbcchicago.com's investigative team: www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/n...

As a kid, I saved up my "Book It!" certificates for 5 months so I could treat my whole family to pizza. I was devastated when I learned each was only valid for a month. Ironically, this did encourage me to read—specifically fine print. Not sure if this is my villain or lawyer origin story.

Found the cutest little indie bookstore/ brunch bar this weekend. And so neat: they give you a passport if you want to visit them all. @twodollarradio.bsky.social 📚💙

1/ I have to admit when I first heard they made Hamilton's life into a play that it sounded boring. The first Treasury Secretary? Are they going to do a song & dance about compound interest?! But actually I highly recommend this book that the musical draws from. A few key highlights: 💙📚

Didn't know I'd be featured in this newsletter but I do love to learn something new! Particularly fascinating: that the number of cars has declined but is still relatively steady in Madison, WI despite the steep rise in their price.