[mylons]

sounds like you might be the compjour.org instructor? if that's the case, big fan! followed along on my own and it got me interested in journalism.

how would someone who's been doing distributed systems and genetics for 8 years make the switch to something equivalent of five thirty eight, or other data driven outfits?

[danso]

I think the quickest way to make the transition is to show skill in visualization. Data journalists share the same kind of analytic skills and processes as other kinds of data practitioners, but with an emphasis on publication and design. Visualization also happens to be the easiest way to reach and impress a large audience.

The other part of it is to demonstrate a good sense of the state of civic affairs. You can actually do quite well with average talent in programming and statistical skill...the bottleneck when it comes to data journalism is knowing the quality and quantity of data that is actually kept and produced by civic entities. Basically, being a good researcher will pay immense dividends...all of my best projects have literally been just being able to find or being aware of information that has already been publicly made available (and the legal/institutional reasons for the precedent).

IQuantNY is one of my favorite examples of non-traditional journalists doing great things in civic data analysis using already publicly available datasets: http://iquantny.tumblr.com/