As a way to enrich stories, Lanacion.com adapted it´s CMS to integrate data as context in our content topical tags. Every news application or data platform we develop must be structured with this in mind so data as context can be distributed in topical or persons tags.
To do this, we first normalize names and then cross them with our TAGS database, and those that are in both datasets are automatically augmented by data or direct urls to our news applications.
For example: in a Legislator´s tag: her Statement of Asset, her path in politics, and even her profile can be presented, together with all the reporting.
Example 1) Person´s TAG: this is Elisa Carrio´s TAG – home page in Lanacion.com
This is the link to our Statements of Assets news application – Elisa Carrió statements of assets page
Elisa Carrio´s Political path from another of our news application “Laberinto Político”
We partnered an NGO that monitors legislative transparency Fundación Directorio Legislativo, and they make every year the Book “Directorio Legislativo” and a web site with structured profile data from Congressmen and Senators. So other link that serves to learn more of that legislator is the “Ficha en Directorio Legislativo”, and it looks like this:
Example 2) Topical Tags.
In Argentina , as we have the “many inflation rates”, we have the “many dollar prices”. As there are restrictions to buy foreing currency, and we: the official dollar, the blue, the turism dollar, the credit card dollar, the soja dollar and the stock markets dollar. So we decided to present dollar stories with datasets and data visualizations and we keep this data updated daily.
At the end of the visualizations we open this data so users can download it in different formats like CSV, XML and XLS.
To help users in this complex dollar-pesos and restrictions situation , we made different online calculators.
Calculator 1: tells you how many dollars can you but regarding the restrictions that we have to buy with a maximum of 20% of our salaries.
Calculator 2: help users convert from pesos to dollars or otherwise, into the official or the “blue” prices
Calculator 3: helps users convert pesos to “tourism” or credit card dollars
Example 3) Inflation and prices
The
inflation scandal in Argentina is not new. Since 2007 Government intervened the Nationals Statistics Institute (INDEC) and private consultants were fined for releasing different CPIs. Besides, Government tried to stop inflation using fixed prices strategies, and then the problem was to find the products in the lists on the supermarket , and inflation is still growing.
So to help users interact and understand , analyse and even create their own stories, LA NACION Data team updates every inflation rate there is and built a panel of datasets in its Open Data Catalog. Then the design team developed graphs that illustrates our stories regarding inflation and prices. Besides, we publish the prices lists with search boxes to help find what is needed.
This coverage is gathered by our “Inflation and prices” tag. In which we cover price stories from products and services, as well as inflation stories . Here is the TAG page:
So , for example users can link to our Open Data Catalog, directly to the Inflation and prices datastreams
Example 4) Open Statements of Assets and public official salaries reporting with data
Example 5) Integrating data to report on Subsidies from the Bus Transportation system, extracted from more than 1200 PDFs, and updated by LNData team
