🔦 Inside a data journalist's toolkit

From Notion, Grammarly and Flourish to a Sony voice recorder🎤

I’m curious about the tools efficient people rely on to do great work. So I invited

Daniel Parris

— a data scientist and data journalist— to share his go-to tools for researching, organizing, graphing, and writing. [Exploring AI? Catch up on my recent post about surprisingly useful ChatGPT apps.]

Background: Daniel was one of DoorDash's first 150 employees and data science hires. He spent nearly six years there before moving into business consulting and data writing. He now writes Stat Significant, a weekly newsletter with more than 10,000 readers that focuses on data-centric essays about movies, music, TV, and more. He's explored some of pop culture's greatest conundrums:

• When Do We Stop Finding New Music?

• Which Movies Popularized (or Tarnished) Baby Names?

• Which Shows Got Their Finale Right, and Which Didn't?

In this guest post Daniel takes us through the labor-intensive process of crafting a Stat Significant article and the applications that expedite his process.

Organization and Note-Taking: Notion

Notion is my central hub for note-taking, content planning, and scratchpad-ing. The app allows you to create workspaces for managing tasks, projects, and workplace collaboration. I keep a backlog of ideas in a kanban board (image below), sorting article concepts by production stage. 

My Notion page for content planning.

I use each article's Notion page to store research and outline rough drafts. Once published, I move an article into the “Published” section of the board, automatically archiving that page—an oddly satisfying end to each essay. 

{Jeremy: For more on Notion, check out my post on what makes Notion AI so useful}

Brainstorming and Transcription: Sony ICD-UX570 Voice Recorder and Descript

I'm a big proponent of Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism," which emphasizes reducing digital clutter and being more mindful of our technology use. 

I found that my smartphone was fostering an aversion to boredom, less creative thinking, and an inability to be alone with my thoughts. Instead of brainstorming essay ideas or contemplating potential analyses, I was looking at Reddit or listening to a podcast. So, I started to leave my phone behind on long walks around my neighborhood.  

I found nature walks without my phone rejuvenating, and my ability to generate essay ideas improved without the internet or Spotify. But there was a catch—I had nowhere to jot down my thoughts. So I bought an ($80) voice recorder. 

The Sony ICD-UX570 Voice Recorder.

I'll admit I feel a bit odd using the recorder in public. That said, I've been able to effectively catalog my ideas while leaving my phone behind, which outweighs any embarrassment.

I dictated the first draft of my most popular article When Do We Stop Finding New Music? while on a long walk around my neighborhood. Ultimately, I think better without my phone. Once I get home, I transcribe audio files with Descript and transfer my newly written notes into Notion. Descript is far and away the best audio transcription service I've used.

Content transcription on Descript.

{Jeremy: Here’s my post on why Descript is so useful for multimedia}

Finding Datasets: Kaggle and Data is Plural

Every week I produce a ~2,000-word essay with five to six custom data visualizations on a relatively unexplored topic. Each article is a lot of work, so I have to locate previously assembled datasets quickly, as opposed to scraping or querying the data myself. Kaggle is my go-to site for data discovery, with an extensive open-source catalog of high-quality datasets.  

Kaggle is an online platform that offers datasets, example workbooks, and a collaborative community for data enthusiasts. Around 75% of the time, Kaggle has the data I need for my article, which I can download with the click of a button for free! 

Exploring Spotify datasets on Kaggle.

Separately, I subscribe to a weekly newsletter called Data is Plural, which curates fascinating and often unusual datasets. Some of the articles I’ve written building on Data is Plural recommendations include A Statistical Exploration of The Hollywood Romance Age Gap and An Analysis of How Celebrity Has Changed Since the 1700s.   

Data Visualization: Flourish

Flourish allows anyone to create interactive charts and maps without extensive coding knowledge. I LOVE Flourish. I used to code my graphs from scratch, adding several hours to my weekly workload. Flourish saves me a ton of time, and I love the aesthetic of its templates. Below are a few charts I produced with Flourish: 

Graphic from Which Movies Popularized (or Tarnished) Baby Names?

Graphic from Why Horror Films are Hollywood's Best Investment

{Jeremy: Here’s my take on why Flourish is one of the best data viz tools}

Writing and Copy-Editing: Grammarly

Before launching Stat Significant, one of my biggest anxieties was that I might look stupid on the internet. I'm not alone in this fear. I'm terrified of publishing an article with an absurd grammatical error, but I also wanted to spare my wife from having to copy edit all of my work. So I started composing my essays using Grammarly's writer interface. Grammarly has dramatically helped with my writing. Plus it recently added new AI capabilities.

Writing a post through Grammarly’s writer interface.

Check out Stat Significant to read more of Daniel's work:

• Are More Celebrities Dying?

• Which Movies Stand the Test of Time, and Which Don't?

• What Was Watched on Netflix in 2023?

Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn, at daniel@statsignificant.com, or for career mentorship: https://mentors.to/danielparris

Wonder Tools will be off next week to give your inbox — and my pen — a pause for July 4th — Independence Day! Reply to this email with questions, comments, or feedback. 👋