Sheffield journalism students help Guardian with local authority data project

Postgraduate journalism students at the University of Sheffield have been signed up by the Guardian for a new data journalism project.

Patrick Butler, editor of society, health and education policy at the newspaper asked students on the university's postgraduate journalism courses to help gather information about spending cuts by local authorities in the UK.

The 75 students from broadcast, print and web courses have each been allocated a number of local authorities to contact and ask specific questions about budget and employment levels. Their deadline is this Friday, 15 October, ahead of the government's spending review scheduled for 20 October, and the information will help the Guardian to gauge the impact of the cuts when they're announced.

"Most of the information needed to pull together data about the impact the spending cuts are already having - and will have in the future - is in the public domain so we don't anticipate any need for FoI requests but it will mean digging around in very dense council paperwork. And this stuff has never been examined on such a scale before. The hope is that it will create a detailed picture of the financial situation councils are in now, meaning that any future cuts in jobs and services can be much more easily tracked," Marie Kinsey, director of postgraduate journalism and course leader of the PgDip and MA Broadcast Journalism course, told Journalism.co.uk.

"It's just a brilliant opportunity for students to get their hands dirty and learn the fundamental journalistic skill of finding and using information. It's come right at the beginning of their course and couldn't set them up better for when they visit their patches to dig up their own stories."

Kinsey hopes the project will increase students' confidence in dealing with local government and their understanding of this sector, she added.

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