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Episode #204: Rebecca Pazos
301 Plays3 years ago
Rebecca Pazos is a mum of one and a senior data journalist with The Straits Times for six years. Recently, she completed her Masters in visual tools with the University of Girona. She is dedicated to telling compassionate, human-centered data...
The post Episode #204: Rebecca Pazos appeared first on PolicyViz.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Updates
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome back to the PolicyViz podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabisch. I hope you and your families are well and healthy and safe. I hope you've been enjoying the last few episodes of the podcast. I've really enjoyed talking to my guests. I've also enjoyed piecing together the various video parts of the podcast and if you want to watch my conversations with
00:00:34
Speaker
my different guests, head over to my YouTube channel. It's been pretty fun trying to put that together. It's a new challenge. I've also been doing a lot more work with my newsletter, finally have, I think, a system set up. I've been writing some more behind the scenes blog posts and some other blogs and some data viz content that hasn't yet made it to the full blog. So if you want to get that sort of behind the scenes look, you want to check out some content that maybe isn't going to make it on policyvis.com, check out the newsletter.
00:01:01
Speaker
But on to the podcast.
Introducing Rebecca Pazos
00:01:03
Speaker
So on this week's episode of the show, Rebecca Pazos joins me. Rebecca is an interactive graphics journalist currently with the Straits Times in Singapore. I was really interested to talk with Rebecca because first off, her work is just terrific.
00:01:19
Speaker
Um, the types of visualizations that they often create in some Asian countries, at least the work in the people that I've spoken to tends to be a lot more data dense, a lot more different than some of the work that you might see in European countries and the United States.
Data Journalism: East vs. West
00:01:34
Speaker
And so we spend a lot of time talking about.
00:01:37
Speaker
those different audiences and what goes into the data journalism and the process at the Straits Times. And then we talk about a few of Rebecca's personal projects that she's worked on, including a master's degree that she's currently pursuing. And so you can see all the links to all those projects and stories and her profiles on the episode notes. And so I'm gonna turn it over to our conversation. So here's this week's episode of the podcast with Rebecca Pazos.
Rebecca's Background and Career Journey
00:02:09
Speaker
Hey Rebecca, good morning. I guess my time, good morning. And even at your time. How are you? Welcome to the show. Good. How are you? Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. Yeah. I'm excited to have you too because we've been sort of talking on and off now for
00:02:25
Speaker
almost a year, I guess. Right. Um, cause we, we were talking about, I saw some of your great work early in the year. And then I asked you to do that video for the one chart at a time series. And then we were talking about doing this and then summer happened. And then finally we were able to have this conversation. So, um, I'm really excited. Um,
00:02:43
Speaker
As I was sort of talking about before we started recording, I feel like there's this focus in the date of his world on the New York Times graphics team and the Washington Post and the Guardian. And then after like sort of the US and Western Europe, it sort of like tails off. Like there's, you know, just like the attention that the Berliner Morgan Post gets and the Hindustan Times and the Straits Times gets sort of like diminishes. And for lack of quality, just for lack of the world, I guess.
00:03:12
Speaker
I was hoping we could talk about your work at the Straits Times, what the team looks like, and maybe if you have thoughts on how communicating data in Singapore might differ from communicating, you know, if you're primarily, you know, on the East Coast of the United States. So I know that's a broad question, but...
Challenges and Opportunities in Data Journalism
00:03:31
Speaker
I'm just going to pass that to you, I guess. Let's dive in. Let's dive in. If you haven't noticed already, I have an Australian accent and I'm originally from Australia. I moved to Singapore about eight years ago now, so the Asian perspective is still very new to me. But I guess having worked at the Straits Times now for going on six years, I've definitely become more aware of
00:04:00
Speaker
Like the differences, I guess, um, I don't have experience with, um, the U S side of things, but at least I have a Western upbringing and I kind of know where we come from in that regard and how it's different here. So actually paying low, uh, just published a story on database society today. It was, um, but if we need to say a date since 26th of August,
00:04:29
Speaker
So she published an article. She runs Continentalist, which is a data of his, kind of like the pudding, but in Southeast Asia. And she published a story today exactly about this issue, about the fact that most data of his storytelling, especially for the media side of things, tends to focus on the Europeans or definitely in the US.
00:04:56
Speaker
And that has expanded out. I think when I first started, it was very, very new. We had some interest in open data. There was an open data movement in Southeast Asia. The Singapore government had set up a data portal here. So it was very exciting when I first started to see what was going to happen out of that for this particular region. And
00:05:24
Speaker
I guess like since then, you know, in the beginning for our team specifically, we started off just myself, a developer from Peru, and my husband as the designer, who's from Argentina. So we were completely foreign talent in this room. Yeah, doing the thing that no one knew really what we were doing.
00:05:48
Speaker
A lot of it gets tied up in visual storytelling and not so much data storytelling. So that's a battle that I've been dealing with. Just like from a news perspective, they're very used to like graphics in print or like, you know,
00:06:10
Speaker
comics even in print. That's something that they can relate with. But moving it to like complex data visualization has been a bit of a struggle. And I think in the last six years now we've started to sort of slowly gain ground there at the Straits time. So now our team
00:06:32
Speaker
We have dedicated data journalists as well, which has been a big leap. We still don't have like a data editor, which I think is something that's missing. Someone that can really, knows how to present data and knows its biases and knows it's ins and outs. That's sort of not something that we have yet, but data journalists, yes.
00:06:57
Speaker
which is why which has resulted in that project that you that we were talking about last year on the COVID one million deaths with the stream graph. So you know when we managed to actually get that published and passed our editors it was like amazing because
00:07:19
Speaker
That's pure database and it's really nice to see that kind of come through and be published and recognized as visual storytelling as well beyond just like the fancy stuff. To me it's fancy and I love it, but they're not used to it. Yeah. So I'm curious on the data editor, like if you had the power of the budget and the power of the hire, like how would you
00:07:45
Speaker
write that job description or I guess what would be that data editor job at the Times.
00:07:52
Speaker
So I guess there's a lot of misconception around the use of data and a lot of journalists, like in the Straits Times, this is probably common. Like it's surprising how common these issues are anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I think data, data is just like, it doesn't matter what language you speak or where you are, like data, data or data. And we all have the same challenges with it. Yeah. I'm curious, like the only other data editor that I've
00:08:20
Speaker
heard of in media and I'm sure there are many but the only one I've heard of is Amanda Cox which I think she is in that role now at the New York Times but I'm curious like what would that job be and like what would they do and then I guess what I'm trying to get it is like do you see that so
The Importance of Data in Journalism
00:08:36
Speaker
I'll reveal my biases about how the newsroom works, right? So I sort of imagine that there are your sort of traditional journalists, and then there are sort of data journalists who are doing more sort of code, and then there's kind of a design team, but a data editor, I would imagine in my head is sort of an umbrella across everybody, but then I don't know how like it all intersects. So that's like, how would you like build that structure?
00:09:02
Speaker
So I guess, I mean, I can pinpoint it to an exact example is coronavirus data, right? I think we have all seen how important it has been to be reporting on this data and how fickle the data is as well. I guess the word would be fickle is that we have all this data and it's amazing to have it, but the impression that it leaves on people can be misconstrued very easily.
00:09:33
Speaker
So, I mean, even more specific than COVID data, a specific example with vaccination data is the, as the cases sort of grow amongst those that are vaccinated, as people become vaccinated, there are new cases and it has a left in impression that like, even though you're vaccinated, you're still going to get infected.
00:09:55
Speaker
And there were a few stories published in the Straits Times that were looking at how a lot of cases were fully vaccinated. And I think it gave the wrong impression to people that do vaccines actually work. And it starts to cause some contention in society, right? So to me, a data editor is someone that can flag that and just be like, hey, we need to do a story on this, or we need to show the data in a different way, or we need to
00:10:23
Speaker
Um, accurately represent that in a, in a different way, because I think when like the average journalist is looking at this data, they don't have the knowledge of, um, being able to actually process the bias in data and to see how it's coming across. Um, they just kind of see these big data points and they're like, Oh, look, the hundred cases yesterday, 80 of them are vaccinated and like, look, it doesn't work. Um, so.
00:10:51
Speaker
You know, that to me is something that a data editor should be able to come in and sort of flag. And, um, as a data journalist, you would pick that up, but as a traditional journalist, maybe you wouldn't see those kinds of flaws in the data. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting to try to build out that. I mean, there are editors, right? And it's like the editors on the words, but like the editors on the data and the data has become so much more important. Uh, it's interesting like to think about how we.
00:11:22
Speaker
I'm not just media, I would think like lots of places might need that like data gatekeeper in some sense.
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so you've mentioned earlier a sort of evolution and how your readers have grown more accustomed to like the date of is and the data journalism at the times. Can you talk a little bit about the balance between, and you mentioned this a little bit, but just to dive a little deeper, the balance between the print side and then the online kind of interactive side. Like how is that? How have you seen that? I mean, you've been there for six years, which is like a pretty long time and, and a pretty like important.
00:11:58
Speaker
moment in like how database is working. So like in those six years, like how has that evolved? How has that changed? Not much. Yeah. I mean, look, I'll be honest, like coming from Australia, it's a very tumultuous media landscape and you're kind of in that landscape. You're forced to move to digital much faster than any other place. And so Singapore has a very.
00:12:26
Speaker
a kind of sheltered existence that we have only two main news outlets, really news companies that dominate the market. And the Straits Times is the only sort of major newspaper here. Yeah. So they, for a very long time, have had all of the advertising money and that thing that's been happening in
00:12:52
Speaker
in the US and everywhere else hasn't happened here yet, but it is coming. It is slowly starting to happen. So they haven't had like that need to just push into digital and to push onto like innovation basically for storytelling. And so our team has always been seen as, I think like a nice to have, like a kind of
00:13:19
Speaker
Like, okay, we have a team that does this, this foreign team, you know, I've been to an Australian Peruvian little team in the corner. And that's definitely benefited us because for a long time, we weren't part of the regular new cycle. We weren't kind of forced into that. And we could, we had the space to be creative and to kind of push boundaries and develop our systems and our coding and that kind of thing. So I think that really helped.
00:13:49
Speaker
It's led us to produce stories that I think have kind of really touched at least the younger generation of Singaporeans. Like every time we have an internship round, they're always like, oh, that we did a mapping of all of the Singapore streets and they absolutely love that kind of thing. The gerrymandering graphic that we did where we like really looked at
00:14:16
Speaker
political boundaries in Singapore for the elections. They definitely, they see these things and their eyes open. They go, oh, the Straits Times can actually produce this kind of content. And I always get really good feedback for that. Just in terms of like, we have to be a little bit creative in terms of the data that we get as well. That's a true
00:14:43
Speaker
That's true for anywhere that you are in the world, I think. So in the US, you have, I guess, a freedom of information cause. You can, with a lot of effort and energy and resources, get something sometimes out of places. But in Singapore, that is not even an option. You get the data from
00:15:10
Speaker
the government or you don't. And usually the data is very, very clean, very, not granular enough to do those meaty kind of visualizations. So we've had to be a little bit more open to kind of sourcing other data points. So for example, the Singapore streets was one where we went through two books
00:15:39
Speaker
And manually like going through. Yeah. We got two books and we had like a couple of interns and me and the interns like took, you know, you'll take A to B and I'll take the rest. You know, we broke it up that way.
00:15:56
Speaker
we managed to classify like, thankfully Singapore is quite small, so it's not. Right. Yeah, we have to be a little bit outside of the box sometimes to get those those media sort of data sets to do something nice with them. The during Mandarin one, for example, we had an intern for about a year beforehand, before the elections, hand drawing
00:16:25
Speaker
the the boundaries from from yeah PDFs yeah wow yeah so i want to talk about the gerrymandering piece uh in a moment and i'll link to it in the show notes because i i have a question for you about that but for you specifically um having done print now primarily i guess for a while like do you
00:16:46
Speaker
Do you feel like, just from your personal interests and perspective, do you feel like you are excited about this push into digital or do you like the print, that idea of people sitting out with a piece of paper and holding in their hands and working on it? Or are you excited about all the things that, the animation and the things that move around and the search buttons and all that stuff that you can do in digital?
00:17:09
Speaker
cool. That's a big question. I saw porn on both sides. Okay, so my personal background is not in print. So the newspaper is definitely a print, first and foremost, but I came in on the digital side and I haven't really had to do anything on the print side. I do love those poster type pieces. I mean,
00:17:32
Speaker
those beautiful pieces that come out of the National Geographic or the New York Times. You just kind of deny they are nice to look at and you want to spend time with them, looking through them. I am a book lover, so I love putting a book in my hand and that tactile feeling.
Tools for Digital Storytelling
00:17:51
Speaker
But also, I'm a millennial, so I'm not like Gen Z. I need to understand that I'm starting to get on in the world.
00:18:02
Speaker
That's not the experience of the next generation. Like they don't know what that, I don't know how they're gonna, I don't know if they're gonna have the same nostalgia for this kind of tactile experience. So then I guess moving towards digital, yeah, I'm excited about digital. I just, the possibilities are endless, which is really daunting and really challenging, but when you get it right,
00:18:31
Speaker
It's super exciting. And the other thing that I wanted to touch on a little bit about what you've said sort of for Asia to come into this scene now. It's really nice to have technologies like what Mike Boxstock and Observable are doing. They're making it accessible for people
00:18:57
Speaker
from all backgrounds to kind of start to like plotly and things like that, to be able to start using D3 or like even having tools like Flourish or I believe this, this, the continentalist actually uses Flourish for a lot of their storytelling visuals. So that there's a lot more tools now and there's a lot more visibility in terms of actually producing these types of stories. And I think it's allowing.
00:19:25
Speaker
um, new voices to come through, uh, from Asia. Another point on that, which I'm, I'm super thrilled about is, um, the Myanmar situation. Um, so in the recent crew, uh, it was an incredible, uh, reflection of the efforts in data storytelling and data journalism and data tools. Um, cause I know a few people there that have been training up journalists there.
00:19:55
Speaker
Um, and there are some incredible resources that they are putting out, um, about like deaths or, you know, protest areas and things like that, like proper data set with like, um, you know, APIs, you can pull from the APIs and you get, this would not have happened like at the last, uh, you know, without, without them opening up a little bit and then having all of these tools at their disposal, um,
00:20:23
Speaker
You know, it's really nice to see them being able to kind of produce all this data content and it's having an impact and getting it out to the rest of the world. So yeah, that's helpful. All this kind of the tools that the Western people are building. Right.
00:20:42
Speaker
the rest of the world is super helpful. Right. So it's really democratizing data and data is, yeah, it's sort of this international way that maybe many folks who are using or some folks at least who are using those tools may not necessarily realize, right? Because I think a lot of people are excited about observable and flourish and data wrapper and other tools because it makes
00:21:04
Speaker
Hey, I don't need to know how to code, but I can make a bar chart race, not that anyone's making bar chart races anywhere, but I can make a bar chart race without having to actually learn how to code. But there are bigger implications of those tools for actual news stories, reporting news stories. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, yeah. So I want to talk about this gerrymandering piece.
00:21:25
Speaker
And so maybe, I mean, it is amazing to me that you had someone sit down and draw these by hand. So maybe you could describe that piece a little bit. And the question that I wanted to get to, I'll just preface this so you could talk a little bit about.
Gerrymandering in Singapore: A Case Study
00:21:39
Speaker
So as you scroll through this piece, and again, I'll put the link in the show notes.
00:21:42
Speaker
you get to the end where you can type in your address and this is a technique that lots of people use and I'm curious on your take of like how important that is that that last aspect of like you can make it super personal as opposed to you know you get through the story you can see these examples and then you can say okay what about me personally yeah I think it's um
00:22:05
Speaker
something we probably haven't nailed yet. So that I don't even think looking back, would I do it the same way now? I don't know. Obviously, having a personalization element is going to be good for a story like that one, because yeah, our audience is Singaporean. So mostly Singaporean, I think like 70 80% Singaporean. So they
00:22:32
Speaker
This is a very hyper personal story. So gerrymandering is a contentious issue in Singapore and it's been dealt with but in various different ways and nothing like this has been done before and you know I was a little bit worried about like producing a piece like this and whether it would whether we didn't be able to publish it. I mean let's be honest Singapore does not have the best track record in terms of like
00:23:01
Speaker
you know, media freedoms. And we work for the Straits Times, and it also doesn't have the best track record. And that is where data really plays a fantastic role, because they couldn't not publish a piece like this, because it was this is just we just hand drew everything that's available, and we made it into a map that you can search. And we tried to make note
00:23:25
Speaker
big conclusions or try to make any sort of big political statements. It was just, this is the data and this is the maps and this is what it represents. And that's it. So very, very dry as much as possible. I mean, I don't know. Personalizing the data. I mean, I think it was an option that maybe we could have done in a less obtrusive way than what we did. Cause you can skip it.
00:23:56
Speaker
and then get to the rest of the piece. But then, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I didn't find it obtrusive because it kind of came towards after you got through the lead of the story. And you see this a lot. And I just, you know, I mean, there's a lot of different stories where people do similar sorts of, you know, here's a story in housing prices. And, you know, now you can put in your zip code and see your housing price. And I think we all know that personalization is important, but I wonder, like,
00:24:24
Speaker
how important it is and whether people actually use it and, you know, the importance of mobile and like, are people using it on their mobile devices? So yeah, it's just curious how you look about it. I actually can't remember now if we tracked that, if we were tracking how many people actually clicked on it. But I do remember we got feedback from the community and they were super keen to see
00:24:50
Speaker
Yeah. What had happened to there. The funny thing about Singapore is that basically you've changed constituency almost every single election wherever you are. It's very, it's very common. So that's why we focused on how many times your constituency had changed. Yeah, because a lot of the times people would be like, oh,
00:25:11
Speaker
I got like five times it changed or like three times it changed. It became like a competition in a way. I mean, we knew that going in. Well, Singapore is small at the end of the day and I do have a funny story to tell about this one. So we were in the office pre-COVID and we were discussing our election coverage.
00:25:38
Speaker
And I had this huge wall set up with all my post-it notes of like all the projects we were going to do. And one of them just had, it was a post-it note and it just said gerrymandering across it. And I'm sitting there talking with my team. Obviously I knew it wasn't going to be gerrymandering, it was going to be something a little bit more data heavy. Sitting there talking with my team and then all of a sudden I look up and there is the vice
00:26:07
Speaker
the deputy prime minister of Singapore and a few of the other senior MPs had come on a tour into the newsroom and I had no idea that this was happening and they're looking around and they're talking to me and then I they saw of course my post-it note that said gerrymandering and they just all started laughing and I was like oh no
00:26:34
Speaker
I am on the blacklist right now. I'm being kicked out of the country. I've never been so embarrassed. I just wanted to hide. Yeah. And thankfully they were very nice about it. And the deputy prime minister, he was like, you know, they're journalists. They need to do their job, let them do their job. Well, that's good. Yeah, that's good.
00:27:02
Speaker
It went by and we ended up publishing it. And my editor in chief was there during the whole incident. And I even have a photo of the event I can share with you later. That is terrific. That is a great story. That is great. So I want to, before we close up, I know you've been doing a master's degree.
Rebecca's Academic Pursuits in Visual Tools
00:27:28
Speaker
And so I'm curious to hear about that.
00:27:32
Speaker
What you've been doing sort of like personal projects and especially during COVID we're all sort of locked in. Like, has that been, um, you're in a master's program, which is hard enough on its, on its own, but you're also doing like what I would guess would be like more personal projects. So has it been like this sort of mix, this weird mix of like, I'm working, like I'm a student and I'm working, but I also get this like outlet to do personal things that maybe you didn't have the opportunity to do or.
00:28:00
Speaker
the instinct to do before actually diving into all of it. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I've been just recently completed the Masters in Visual Tools at the University of Hirona, which was organized by Shaqin Gonzalez-Eira. He's quite famous in the community. He worked for The Guardian and The New York Times and Nat Geo and
00:28:23
Speaker
He put together this master's program, which is unlike any master's program, I think that exists on the planet, which is very Shaqeen and his foundation. We started off in October last year, we finished in June, so it was quite intensive.
00:28:42
Speaker
Um, and the first, uh, the first, uh, block of modules was D three, um, Python, uh, open data engineering and statistics. And we did that like consecutively. We had to produce a project that used all those three elements and I did not code. I'm not a coder, um, at all. I'm a journalist by training.
00:29:05
Speaker
And it was just really good to get my hands dirty in code. And I finally feel a little bit more comfortable now with actually just giving it a go and trying it out. So I'm nowhere near like a coder at all, but I'm now not so scared, which is nice. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. And then the second block was, you know, ethics with Shaqin's module on the creative side of things and also mapping.
00:29:36
Speaker
And for the Shaqins particular subject, we ended up having to do what was called 60 days of data. So we had to collect 60 days of personal data and then produce something out of that. And I ended up going with, I was inspired by a academic paper on turning dance into data, dance movements.
00:29:59
Speaker
It's called La Van movement analysis. So I had no idea that you could do this at that point. I used to be a dancer as a kid. I was always dancing. I danced my whole life basically. And, you know, I went into work and I became a mom and then I stopped dancing. And then I had this opportunity where I could like,
00:30:22
Speaker
marry the two together, like dancing and I was like, I have to try this. I don't know if it's going to work. And that was kind of the beauty of doing the master's program was that it didn't have to be like a fully finished published project for an editorial paper.
Dance and Data: A Unique Integration
00:30:39
Speaker
It could be even failed. Well, it failed. Yeah, so it was really nice to have that freedom. So I ended up doing like 60 days of my mental health and then
00:30:52
Speaker
translating that into like data moves and then, you know, and presenting that as a data piece and was I think the most freeing experience I've had that could marry this like data side of me, this logical, you know, factual side of me with also the freedom of movement and dance. And the really nice thing about it was that I found out that if you dance,
00:31:21
Speaker
and you sing, it actually helps improve your mental health. So my recommendation at the end of that was all of us in lockdown, just get up and move and shake your bodies and let it be free and sing and you may feel a little bit better.
00:31:41
Speaker
Well, that's an awesome way to finish this interview. So a very positive, uplifting message. Dance with your data. Dance with your data. Yeah, that's so great. That's a t-shirt waiting to happen. Yeah. So I'll put the link to that project up on the show notes so people can check it out. And it's got videos of you, sort of clips of you dancing next to each of these little pieces. So it's a really fun project that people should check out.
00:32:08
Speaker
Rebecca, thanks so much for coming on the show. This has been really fun chatting with you and learning all about the work you guys are doing over there. Thank you so much for having me. I hope we can talk soon. Yeah, I hope so. In person, maybe one day. Yeah, in person, maybe. That would be great. Thanks. Okay.
00:32:26
Speaker
And thanks to everyone for tuning into this week's episode of the show. I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you learned a little bit about the work that Rebecca's doing. And I hope you'll check out the Straits Times Works. You know, try to check out some of these international newspapers that maybe you're not as familiar with checking out. You know, personally, you know, the ones that I check out.
00:32:44
Speaker
Aside from the Washington Post and the New York Times that I basically read every day because I'm located on the east coast of the U.S., I also tried to read the Chicago Tribune. I tried to read the Los Angeles Times, both of which have some really good data visualization teams going on. I also check out the Berliner Morgan Post, the Hindustan Times out of India, the Straits Times, and a bunch of others. So please feel like you should check out these other organizations around the world because they're doing incredible work and sometimes they'll get the credit that they deserve.
00:33:13
Speaker
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Podcast Credits
00:33:31
Speaker
Thanks so much for listening.
00:33:34
Speaker
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00:33:56
Speaker
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