Journocoders workshop: Scraping the web with R

This is the first ever edition of Journocoders NYC, a meetup group on practical coding skills for journalists. We will be running a workshop-like environment suitable for both beginners and more experienced developers wanting to try new things.

This month, we'll learn how to scrape data from the web using the R programming language. R is a popular and powerful language focused on working with data and statistical analysis. There's a good piece here from Timo Grossenbacher from Swiss Radio & TV on why journalists should start using R. (https://timogrossenbacher.ch/2015/12/why-data-journalists-should-start-using-r-in-2016/)

Bring a laptop along as this is a practical, hands-on workshop. No programming experience is required. However, if you feel comfortable doing so, please download and install R (https://cloud.r-project.org) and R Studio (https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/). If you have trouble doing that, don't worry, we will help you on the day.

Make sure you're signed up to Dropbox to view our shared doc (https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/Journocoders-NYC-June-2018--ADPcjuLTAVlBbtZn98jYtQYsAQ-uIJNXxGkqU9P9cv557s6X) and add links to anything data or journalism-related you've seen or worked on to the show and tell section!

This event is kindly hosted by the Brown Institute at Columbia Journalism School, and refreshments are sponsored by The Wall Street Journal.

Schedule:

7.00: Doors open
7.30: Show & tell
7.40: Tutorial
9.00: Drinks!