5 reasons Excel isn't actually the worst

By Sarah Darby

If you're anything like me, you probably cringe at the thought of using Excel. I, too, claimed I hated Excel, thinking the program was only useful to accountants and maybe people living under a rock.

It turns out, Excel is actually a very useful tool for data journalism. I completed NICAR's computer assisted boot camp last week, and I emerged with a new-found appreciation for Excel. If you're a Mizzou student, I highly encourage you to take the CAR class, JOURN 4430, during a regular semester or intersession bootcamp to learn more about data reporting. For everyone else, here are five reasons Excel isn't actually the worst.

How to #NICAR15 If You Missed #NICAR15

By Madison Feller

Last week, a gaggle of journo/coder hybrids overtook Atlanta, Georgia for the 2015 Computer Assisted Reporting conference. Over three-and-a-half days, students and professionals alike came together to learn about everything from Fusion Tables to APIs. It was a jam-packed weekend, but if you happened to miss it, don't worry. ONA Mizzou is here to tell you how to get everything you can from #NICAR15—even if you didn't actually go.

Workshop alert: How to build an interactive map in 60 minutes

By Elise Schmelzer and Andrew Gibson

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Tomi Knuutila

Maybe you want to track all the cool places you've been. Perhaps you want to create an in-depth map that shows today's domestic migration routes, like Forbes did. Or maybe you want to collect and share the best sledding hills in town, like ABC 7 in Detroit.

Whatever your goals may be, having the ability to tap into all the geographic information online is invaluable both inside and outside the newsroom.

Join the Online News Association at Mizzou as journalism professor David Herzog leads a one hour workshop on how to build clickable, customizable maps with Google Fusion Tables. Herzog, also the academic adviser to the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, will highlight his favorite examples of mapping in journalism and briefly introduce other online cartography tools.

• When: 5 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 30
• Where: Microsoft Application Development Lab (42 Walter Williams Hall)

Three Missouri School of Journalism professors' blogs you should be reading

By Andrew Gibson

There's a good chance you've blogged about something during your time at the Missouri School of Journalism. It might've been for Journalism 2150 -- a required course, for those not familiar -- or maybe you're like us and write for a school organization.

What you might not have known, though, is that some of the professors grading your blogs might have ones of their own. Here's a look at three MU faculty members who, as they advise you to do, are building their online brand.

Joy Mayer

Twitter: (@mayerjoy)

The Columbia Missourian's director of community outreach writes about, you guessed it, the intersection of journalism and community. You'll find posts about being transparent with your audience and about "what Missouri community newspapers are doing on Facebook."

But here's the bonus: Mayer, also an associate professor in Print and Digital News, teaches participatory journalism (Journalism 4700), which is all about "social media, analytics, identifying audience, being ambassadors for the newsroom, crowdsourcing and comment moderation." That means her blog is full of useful snippets from the course. If you're curious how to market yourself, find a job or avoid becoming the annoying one in the newsroom, start reading.