Paul Bradshaw
@paulbradshaw.bsky.social
Data journalist and course leader, MA Data Journalism at Birmingham City University
Some official information can be hard to access through Freedom of Information. Jump to this week’s Freedom of Information stories… […] The post Freedom of Information in the news – week ending 3/7/2026 – #FOIFriday fir...
Freedom of Information in the news – week ending 3/7/2026
Some official information can be hard to access through Freedom of Information. If it's in private emails or Whatsapps, it might be overlooked or hard to get...
clairemiller.net
It’s another “wife of” headline! But it’s also an opportunity to get student’s exploring how different forms of bias might shape news reporting — and not just the obvious ones onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/07/03/t...
This one story can be used to discuss seven different types of bias
The latest “wife of” headline — ITV News’s report on the actor Lisa Faulkner revealing that she has undergone surgery after a cancer diagnosis — is an opportunity to get journalis…
onlinejournalismblog.com
Sending FOIs to multiple bodies sounds like a great idea - until the responses come in. Can AI help to deal with the inconsistencies? Here’s a methodology I put together to make the process less stressful, faster and more accurate. onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/06/30/m...
onlinejournalismblog.com
🦾 New post: Integrating AI into newsrooms presents us with a choice: to make work more dehumanised - or more stimulating onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/06/18/m...
“Many newsrooms are not optimised for what humans do best” (but we have an opportunity to change that)
Image by Cory Doctorow, from Revenge of the Chickenized Reverse-Centaurs Some essential reading by Agnes Stenbom Swedling explores how news organisations integrate AI into their workflows and the i…
onlinejournalismblog.com
At a session on OSINT+AI at #DataHarvest and love the fact that one person asked whether using AI made the process more or less satisfying. Job satisfaction should always be a consideration when using AI alongside hallucination, bias, environment etc.
I'm doing 2️⃣ talks at this year's Dataharvest: 💪 Managing responses from mass FOI projects (and managing AI assistance) 🗺️ Superpowered QGIS: How to automate a map for every location on a list dataharvest26.sched.com/list/simple #DataHarvest26 #EIJC26
Dataharvest 2026 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference Schedule
Check out the schedule for Dataharvest 2026 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference
dataharvest26.sched.com
Freedom of Information requests are not only one of the best ways to get original and exclusive stories that set your reporting apart — they’re also a good way to develop core journalism habits like curiosity, scepticism, and creativity. Here’s how: onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/03/02/h...
How to use FOI to develop good journalism habits
Freedom of Information (FOI) requests are not only one of the best ways to get original and exclusive stories that set your reporting apart — they’re also a good way to develop core journalis…
onlinejournalismblog.com
Agora em português, a Pirâmide Invertida do Jornalismo de Dados parte 2 onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/02/26/6...
6 formas de comunicar jornalismo de dados (a Pirâmide Invertida do Jornalismo de Dados – parte 2)
A pirâmide invertida do jornalismo de dados mapeia o processo de utilização de dados na reportagem, desde a geração de ideias, passando pela limpeza, contextualização e combinação, até à comunicaçã…
onlinejournalismblog.com
Agora em português: a ‘Pirâmide Invertida do Jornalismo de Dados’ onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/02/23/a...
A pirâmide invertida do jornalismo de dados: Do conjunto de dados à história
Os projetos de jornalismo de dados envolvem várias etapas, cada uma apresentando seus próprios desafios. Para ajudar a compreendê-las, criei o que chamei de ‘Pirâmide Invertida do Jornalismo …
onlinejournalismblog.com
Wonderful to see former colleague @tvmarv.bsky.social being celebrated by students at Birmingham City University this lunchtime
Too often discussion around using AI is “either/or” — an assumption that you either use AI for a task, or do it yourself. But there’s another option: do both. onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/02/02/p...
Parallel prompting: another way to avoiding deskilling with AI
Photo by Markus Winkler Too often discussion around using AI is “either/or” — an assumption that you either use AI for a task, or do it yourself. But there’s another option: do bo…
onlinejournalismblog.com
At a journalism educators’ conference last year lecturers were asked why they didn’t use AI. The answers provided a useful starting point for reflection… onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/01/19/i...
“I don’t want it to be easy” and other objections to using AI
In September I took part in a panel at the African Journalism Education Network conference. The most interesting moment came when members of the audience were asked if they didn’t use AI — an…
onlinejournalismblog.com
🚦 New post! I've written before about 'journey prompting' and 'destination prompting' - now I explain how you can combine both to address the risks of deskilling that come with #AI onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/01/13/h...
How to stop AI making you stupid: hybrid destination-journey prompting
Last month I wrote about destination and journey prompts, and the strategy of designing AI prompts to avoid deskilling. In some situations a third, hybrid approach can also be useful. In this post …
onlinejournalismblog.com
I’ve published an extract from my book chapter on data, data visualization and interactives within news — only with more words and pictures onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/01/06/d...
Data, data visualization and interactives within news
In this extract from a book chapter in the new Routledge Companion to Visual Journalism, I look at how the explosion of data as a source for journalists, and the separation of content from interfac…
onlinejournalismblog.com
AI would be impacting our lives far less if only Google hadn't become such a shit search engine
Grift and corruption. This just begins to dig into it all. Gift link: The Trump Family Business Empire Is Growing. We Mapped Out 268 Pieces of It. www.wsj.com/politics/ele...
The Trump Family Business Empire Is Growing. We Mapped Out 268 Pieces of It.
A second-term boom in crypto and other areas has created billions in new wealth for the first family.
wsj.com
Here’s how to spot double counting in your data story — and what to do about it. onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/12/16/d... #ddj
Double counting: how to spot it and how to avoid it
Double counting — counting something more than once in data — can present particular risks for journalists, leading to an incorrect total or proportion. Here’s how to spot it — and what to do about…
onlinejournalismblog.com
A much-needed guide by Ides Debruyne to the business side of teaming up to pursue an investigation www.journalismfund.eu/news/plea-be... - we need more guidance like this
Plea For Better Negotiations in Cross-border Journalism | Journalismfund Europe
BRUSSELS - How and when does a journalist or team of journalists start negotiations with a media company? And how do they not only get their international cross-border investigative journalism publish...
journalismfund.eu
How to (not) write about numbers onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/09/30/h...
How to (not) write about numbers
Image by Andy Maguire | CC BY 2.0 If you’ve been working on a story involving data, the temptation can be to throw all the figures you’ve found into the resulting report — but the same …
onlinejournalismblog.com
Crime on buses is thankfully pretty uncommon. But which routes in the West Midlands are the worst affected according to #FOI:
Freedom of Information in the news – week ending 29/8/2025
A refused or unanswered Freedom of Information request can still be a story. (But there's some successes too...
clairemiller.net
“Maintain a kill checklist. Try to kill your own finding. Publish what survived.” And many other tips www.dutchosintguy.com/post/stop-ca...
Stop Calling It OSINT
A field rant about shortcuts, ego, and other creative ways to waste everyone’s timeLet’s just say the quiet part out loud: most of what’s sold as “OSINT” online is cosplay. It’s people screenshotting ...
dutchosintguy.com
“GPT-5, even in ‘Thinking’ and ‘Pro’ modes, was a considerable downgrade when compared with the capabilities demonstrated by GPT o4-mini-high” www.bellingcat.com/resources/20...
LLMs vs. Geolocation: GPT-5 performs worse than other AI models - bellingcat
Bellingcat challenged the latest models—Grok, GPT and Gemini—on geolocation tasks, revealing GPT-5 as a clear downgrade.
bellingcat.com
Stop anthropomorphising AI. It’s not “biased” in the way you think. onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/05/07/w...
Why I’m no longer saying AI is “biased”
TLDR; Saying “AI has biases” or “biased training data” is preferable to “AI is biased” because it reduces the risk of anthropomorphism and focuses on potential s…
onlinejournalismblog.com
2. Learn about in-depth investigations from journalists @theguardian.com and @theexamination.org 3. Hone your data skills with @paulbradshaw.bsky.social and the power of story-telling from @healthequals.bsky.social 4. Hear the economic case for reducing inequalities from @davefinch.bsky.social
A new AI function is being added to Google Sheets that could make most other functions redundant. But is it any good? Here’s what I’ve learned in the first week… onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/04/10/g...
Google Sheets has a new AI function — how does it perform on classification tasks?
A new AI function is being added to Google Sheets that could make most other functions redundant. But is it any good? And what can it be used for? Here’s what I’ve learned in the first week… AI has…
onlinejournalismblog.com
🤐 If you can't get access to public data, or information provided by the authorities is not credible, what do you do, how do you obtain data for a story? Here are some techniques used by reporters around the world onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/03/25/h...
How do I get data if my country doesn’t publish any?
Spotlight photo by Paul Green on Unsplash In many countries public data is limited, and access to data is either restricted, or information provided by the authorities is not credible. So how do yo…
onlinejournalismblog.com
I wonder how much fun the writer/sub had identifying when to use blond vs blonde in this piece. Either way, it’s a great example (replace them all with blanks for a cruel subbing test) www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
The blond advantage: fair hair completely changed my life – but is it time to give it up?
When I first dyed my hair, the difference in how I was treated made me assume life got better the more you lightened your look. I have now spent years testing the theory ...
theguardian.com
Further important 🐹📈 data journalism from @louisashworth.bsky.social and cartography from @theboysmithy.ft.com about the cost of small caged mammals (scm) in the UK: www.ft.com/content/f1cb...
Scottish public bodies have been warned not to take #FOI court action they are likely to lose…advice that could probably apply more widely. FOI stories that mostly avoided this this week...
Freedom of Information in the news – week ending 25/10/2024 – #FOIFriday – Words + Numbers
Post published:October 25, 2024 Post category:Freedom of Information Reading time:8 mins read Freedom of Information in the news – week ending 25/10/2024 – #FOIFriday Scottish public bodies have been warned not to take court action they are likely to lose…advice that would probably apply to pu...
clairemiller.net
