Drilling Down: A Quick Guide to Free and Inexpensive Data Tools by Nils Mulvad.
From the post:
Newsrooms don’t need large budgets for analyzing data–they can easily access basic data tools that are free or inexpensive. The summary below is based on a five-day training session at Delo, the leading daily newspaper in Slovenia. Anuška Delić, journalist and project leader of DeloData at the paper, initiated the training with the aim of getting her team to work on data stories with easily available tools and a lot of new data.
“At first it seemed that not all of the 11 participants, who had no or almost no prior knowledge of this exciting field of journalism, would ‘catch the bug’ of data-driven thinking about stories, but soon it became obvious” once the training commenced, said Delić.
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Encouraging story about data journalism as well as a source for inexpensive tools.
Even knowing the most basic tools will make you standout from people that repeat the government or party line (depending on where you are located).