New Scientist Visualizes Breaking News

Ellie Fields
il August 7, 2011

Peter Aldhous of NewScientist Magazine is a true data journalist. He’s always thinking of ways to tell stories and help people understand the world around them by using data. In an interview, we asked Peter about why visualization is useful for his type of journalism.

Within 24 hours of the massive earthquake in Japan, Peter had a visualization showing the enormous amount of earthquake activity around Japan. Soon after, as Fukushima crisis was developing, he helped people answer the question: “what nuclear reactors that are like the troubled reactors are nearest to me?” We sat down with Peter in his San Francisco home to talk about how he uses data.

Peter was one of first data journalists to pick up Tableau Public, and we’re glad he did. We’ve enjoyed seeing his visualizations, and his feedback on new features he’d like to see and usability have been invaluable.