WRAL launches data-driven local newsletter focused on Raleigh neighborhoods
WRAL News is launching a new newsletter offering data-driven insights about neighborhoods across Raleigh.
The newsletter — WRAL Data Trackers: Raleigh — highlights WRAL’s quantitative coverage, in which stories are found by sifting through trends in Raleigh city data for new insights and observations. A new program for this initiative, called Crosstown, enables WRAL to access and convert large, relevant datasets into granular local news reporting.
WRAL News is the first local television news station in the country selected to take part in the program, which is designed to analyze state and local data and help transform them into important stories for Raleigh residents using the platform.
Crosstown has also rolled out several pilot journalism programs in Los Angeles and Chicago, similar in format to WRAL Raleigh: Data Trackers.
Crosstown was developed at the University of Southern California as a data tool for journalists. It’s the result of collaboration between the Annenberg School of Journalism and the Viterbi School of Engineering, led by Professor Gabriel Kahn.
Through Crosstown and its integrated database, called Metabase, WRAL is able to report on various issues down to the neighborhood level. The new newsletter uses the boundaries that were used to create Citizen Advisory Councils, and each of the 18 neighborhoods will get its own weekly newsletter that covers topics such as crime, construction or traffic. You can sign up to receive a newsletter from any of the neighborhoods at https://www.wral.com/datatrackers/
WRAL’s analysis will enable readers to see how they compare to different neighborhoods and the city as a whole on a variety of issues. At the heart of the project is data-driven storytelling in an era when demand for hyper-local journalism is higher than ever.
Instead of declaring whether crime is up or down citywide, for example, the newsletter can help residents learn the crime rate in their neighborhood. Crime data is just one of several datasets that are analyzed at the neighborhood level for stories. Crosstown pulls each dataset from the city of Raleigh’s public data.
Articles are expected to focus on a number of quality-of-life topics, such as how many potholes were filled during 2022 or the number of pool permits issued.
