Mainstream media takes first steps in adopting open data hacker culture

On Monday 4 February The Age hosted the Data Newsroom event, where teams had an opportunity to dig into three previously publicly unreleased datasets,

1. Political party funding data, which lists what companies donate money to which political parties.
2. A database that includes the archives of all Age articles along with key words and relationships between those keywords.
3. Weather data for Australia going back one-hundred years.

As reported by the Australian chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN), 14 teams consisting of journalists, hackers and citizens took on the challenge of producing an article from one of the datasets and convincing a ‘Dragon’s Den’ panel of data journalists of the merits of their approach.

Four shortlisted teams got to go to the public lecture by web inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, at Melbourne University where the winner was to be announced.

To follow what happens and who wins, follow the OKFN blog at http://au.okfn.org/2013/02/05/the-data-newsroom/