Paul Bradshaw

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…

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...

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…

Agora em português, a Pirâmide Invertida do Jornalismo de Dados parte 2
onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/02/26/6...

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 …

Agora em português: a ‘Pirâmide Invertida do Jornalismo de Dados’

onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/02/23/a...

Wonderful to see former colleague @tvmarv.bsky.social being celebrated by students at Birmingham City University this lunchtime

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…

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...

“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…

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...

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 …

🚦 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...

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…

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...

Gambling centres 'clustered' in deprived areas of the UK People in deprived areas are more likely to have adult gaming centres on their doorstep, data shows.

more context - www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

@bbcnewslive.bsky.social
@paulbradshaw.bsky.social

AI would be impacting our lives far less if only Google hadn't become such a shit search engine

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.

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...

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…

Here’s how to spot double counting in your data story — and what to do about it.

onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/12/16/d... #ddj

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...

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

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 …

How to (not) write about numbers onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/09/30/h...

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...

Crime on buses is thankfully pretty uncommon.

But which routes in the West Midlands are the worst affected according to #FOI:

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 ...

“Maintain a kill checklist. Try to kill your own finding. Publish what survived.” And many other tips
www.dutchosintguy.com/post/stop-ca...

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.

“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...

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…

Stop anthropomorphising AI. It’s not “biased” in the way you think.
onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/05/07/w...

Kiss-ass is a great term. I have been calling it over-positivity but ass-kissing is better

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

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…

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...

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…

🤐 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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Police FOI unit dubbed 'authoritarian censor' Campaigners voice concern as an investigation shows a police unit blocked requests for information.

Important reporting by my colleague Alex Homer on police use of a Clearing House-style #FOI unit.
Journalists identified, potential media attention discussed, and forces advised to withdraw previous response

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It doesn’t look at change, so it doesn’t say they become more distrustful, no - more that audiences assess news critically in general

Spotting false news and doubting true news: a systematic review and meta-analysis of news judgements - Nature Human Behaviour Pfänder and Altay conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of 67 experimental articles, showing that people discern true from false news with ease. When making mistakes, people err on the side of...

Research: people are “better at rating false news as false than at rating true news as true”
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Submissions Open for 2025 Sigma Awards, GIJN New Host of Data Journalism Award GIJN is proud to announce that it is the new administrator for the annual SIGMA data journalism awards, which are now accepting submissions for the 2025 round.

‼️ DEADLINE EXTENSION!

🏆 Sigma Awards 2025

As with previous editions, the award will maintain its no-category rule and will have experts in data journalism from around the world constituting its jury and prize committee.

Deadline: March 7, 2025
More: https://twp.ai/1TaJrR

7 prompt design techniques for generative AI every journalist should know Tools like ChatGPT might seem to speak your language, but they actually speak a language of probability and educated guesswork. You can make yourself better understood — and get more professional r…

I’ve put together a crib sheet of 7 techniques for journalists to get better results from genAI tools

onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/02/19/7...