Insights · 7 min read

Open data CSVs for journalists: quick exploration before stories ship

Government portals and election data: sanity checks, joins on FIPS codes, and reproducible excerpts.

Published March 21, 2025 · Table

Newsrooms download CSVs from city open-data sites daily. Fast sorting and filtering catch null districts, duplicate precinct IDs, and impossible totals before publication.

Practice

Keep immutable raw downloads; work on copies.
Log the portal URL and retrieval timestamp in your methodology.