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Andy Dickinson

Andy Dickinson

Andy is a Senior lecturer in Journalism at Manchester Metropolitan University where he is the program lead for the MA Multimedia Journalism.

📍 Manchester

Data journalism: Making it real

The following is an edited version of a chapter I contributed to a new book Data Journalism: Mapping the Future, published by Abramis academic publishing. [http://www.abramis.co.uk/books/bookdetails.php?id=184549616] The fact that I’m in it aside, I can heartily recommend it as a

Essential vitamins for your journalism

It’s that time of year again where I find myself doing a tour of various rooms and buildings introducing myself to new students. By a quirk of timetabling and course structures I don’t get to see many of them to teach until later in the year. So I

International students die in groups of five. Or do they?

**Update: They knocked back my second request on the grounds of anonymity. The sample was so small that giving me details might risk identifying someone. That seems fair, but if nothing else the very low number means that in the context of my original thinking the numbers are not in

Does Data Journalism help democracy?

I’m writing a book chapter on data journalism (I know, who isn’t these days) which I’ll share more of when it makes sense! But one of the areas that is giving me real pause for thought at the moment is the question of how much data journalism

Educating the competition out of journalism

Over the last month my department has had a number of accreditation visits. Two of the training councils that, in the UK at least, inspect, accredit and generally rubber stamp what we do, the BJTC [http://www.bjtc.org.uk/] and the NCTJ [http://www.nctj.com/], have both been

How useful is FOI for sports journalists?

've been preparing lectures for first years around Data Journalism and wanted to talk a little about the Freedom of information act; a key driver in the the rise of data in journalists consciousness. The class I teach is a pretty even split of those studying journalism and sports journalism.

Diagnosing the noble disease - how we treat journalism in the 21st century.

This is the original script to a short presentation I gave University of Northampton’s ‘Imagine Journalism in Ten Years’ Time [http://www.northampton.ac.uk/events/event/782/]‘ mini-conference chaired by Kevin Marsh [http://twitter.com/kjmarsh], and organised byJohn Mair [http://twitter.com/johnmair100]. Other speakers included:Professor

It's not SEO it's human linkbait

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Quinoa_closeup.jpg/640px-Quinoa_closeup.jpg] As optimisation (and seo) are on my mind at the moment [http://digidickinson.net/2013/03/01/ivory-tower-dispatch-headlines-seo-and-wordpress-com/] , it was nice to see an article on the fears of populism in the age of search

Ivory tower dispatch: Headlines, SEO and Wordpress.com

Online Journalists can learn a lot about optimising content from the likes of the Daily Mail but can we put it in to practice on WordPress.com blogs? Over the last few weeks I’ve been talking to first year journalists about blogging and the starting point is why blogging

In praise of the Final Salute

> They are the troops that nobody wants to see, carrying a message that no military family ever wants to hear. It begins with a knock at the door. Making documentaries has put me in the room with people sharing some dark moments. The impact of that is hard to