Skills / Education

∞ Tools: Advanced Excel, IBM Watson, Datawrapper, Tableau, CartoDB, Flourish, Google sheets/docs etc, Cloud 9, Overview Docs, Import io, Final Cut Pro, Open Refine, Postman API, & more.

Skills: Photography both digital and analogue. Video production and editing. Data cleaning and analysis. Interactive graphics and maps. GIPA & FOI applications. Scraping with various extensions, AI  tools, regex and Python. Some coding in Javascript, CSS & HTML. 

∞ Teaching: Wrote the data journalism course for Macleay College in 2018 and was a lecturer and tutor there until 2021.

Corporate course development and training for Newscorp in 2017. I wrote and presented the data journalism module of NewsCorp’s NewsUniversity program under Neil Varcoe.

Data journalism tutor at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) – 2017 & 2018.

Journalism tutor at Sydney University August – December 2022.

Training workshops for the Google News Initiative – 2023

Professional presentation skills honed by years of training at Village Roadshow and Newscorp including a two-day NIDA corporate performance course in October 2017.

∞ Online Courses: Web Developer Bootcamp online course – 2017, Intro to Computer Science Udacity – May 2016, R Studio coursera online course Johns Hopkins University – July 2015, Doing Journalism with Data Course – March 2015.

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Formal Education

∞ Diploma of Journalism Macleay College – 2012

Awarded Journalism Medal, graduated top of the 2012 class.

Editor of Macleay College’s news website ‘The Newsroom’.

Created daily news lists, published a blog, edited student multimedia content including video, photos, and words.

Conducted an investigation into the links between terrorism, organised crime and counterfeit handbags.

∞ Diploma of Film Australian Film Base – 2007

Production management, camera operation, directing and video editing on Final Cut Pro.

I worked on independent and professional films, music videos and TV series between 2007 and 2012.

A few examples:

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Innovation and hackathons

Visual stories teamwork

I’ve written, researched and helped develop award-winning visual stories such as this 2023 women in politics article that won the Society of News Design (SND) Politics category, an analysis of 123 years of federal budget speeches.

Channel Nine Hackathon 2023

I presented and helped develop an AI solution for image searching using Open AI CLIP (Contrastive Language–Image Pre-training), built on zero-shot transfer learning.

CLIP can learn visual concepts from natural language supervision and apply better captions making it easier to split content into relevant categories.

This semantic and relational search also works for captioning, keeping metadata consistent, accurate and up to date. It has been used by the New York Times and other corporations. We developed a live prototype called “Supercharge DCX”. 

By using other AI models via transfer learning it could be possible to have suggested images for stories based on keywords in the article. 

By training an AI model on library data we may find photos of famous people in the archive before they were famous such as NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb who would have been photographed working at highway patrol or in other settings.

2016 Walkley hackathon

The Global Editors Network and The WalkleyFoundation hosted the Editor’s Lab hackathon in March 2016, I also represented Fairfax Media in the 2018 event.

I was among the 14 teams invited to compete, and while our entry didn’t win, it was a great experience. Our entry Comment Sweeper is a tool for journalists and readers to better filter, understand and engage with comments posted to news stories on social media and news websites.

Newscorp may develop our prototype and we were mentioned as one of the outstanding projects at the hack in a few forums. An example from the ABC link below:

From memory, there were a few other projects that stood out to me:

● NewsCorp and IBM teamed up to solve the problem of finding sources for follow up stories by analysing the vast amounts of text in their comments sections and Facebook pages, looking for indicators that the audience member has a personal experience that could enhance their stories.

News leads in numbers

Working with developers, reporters, cartoonists, and editors at Newscorp, Fairfax Media and Channel Nine I’ve produced exclusive feature articles and many page-one stories.

I’ve anchored the Herald’s HSC annual ranking of NSW high schools from 2018 to 2023 and found better metrics to measure public school performance, which has converted more people to subscribe to the paper than any other story in 2023.

I analysed a decade of census data to find the jobs that have grown and shrunk the most since 2011. I pitched, researched and helped produce an analysis of 123 years of federal budget speeches.

In 2022, I found a trove of leaked documents the AFP were unaware of that detailed (in Spanish) secret operations in Columbia, revealing how budget constraints hamper the prosecution of international drug cartels.

Features: A Tale of two Sydneys was a series of stories I co-produced driven by data comparing the eastern and western suburbs of the city.

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Stories about Transport: 
I’ve written op-eds about why Sydney hates cyclists, and traffic analysis and looking at the effect of clearways on Sydney.

This story about drink driving used exclusive data from the Bureau of crime statistics. Cyclists suffering abuse on the road and online and where cyclists crash.

ABS statistics-based stories

on income, gender bias and this one about median income changes.

Housing issues: Patterns of development in Sydney. Homelessness caused by the property boom.

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Technology-based articles: Machine learning compares Sydney to Paris. The dark side of data looked at why personal data matters.

Other topics:

The price of home delivery in Sydney, the effect of parking in disabled spaces,  Greyhound drugging, poker machines.

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I have produced more than 100 leads for stories featured in all 20 Newslocal newspapers and other NewsCorp publications, since 2015. Some examples are below.

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This story was part of the 2016 Federal election coverage, that showed the 17 federal seats with the fewest people on Newstart, were all held by the Liberal party.

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Negative gearing was a battleground in the 2016 federal election and this story outlined the major party positions on the issue supported by data showing the local benefits.

Liberal candidate for Berowra Julian Leeser is standing by the controversial tax break which benefits about 10 per cent of people in the local area who negatively gear property.

Labor and the Greens candidates say the other 77,000 voters deserve better than a policy that costs billions each year and pushes up house prices.

Other political stories picked up by mass media include links between Federal and NSW Treasurers quoted by the state political editor of the Daily Telegraph.

Ms Berejiklian, 44, met Mr Hockey, 49, more than 20 years ago when they were both in the Young Liberals and they have been good friends ever since.

“We’re always there at the end of the phone for each other if we need to be,” Ms Berejiklian said.

They both worked in the office of former state Liberal leader Peter Collins in the early 1990s and their paths have crossed at crucial times since. For example as president of the Young Liberals, ­Ms Berejiklian was on the preselection panel when Mr Hockey first ran for the seat of North Sydney…

My story about funding for the $3 Billion NorthConnex tunnel was based on my analysis during the 2015 NSW budget lockup & was followed by major news outlets.

WESTERN Sydney motorists using the M7 will be forced to pay tolls for an extra 11 years to help fund the city’s “missing link” — a tunnel under Pennant Hills Road in the northern suburbs.

The State Government has confirmed the M7 toll concession, which was due to end in 2037, will be extended until 2048 to raise funds for $3 billion NorthConnex which will connect the M1 and the M2 motorways.

My story about renaming suburbs in Blacktown was picked up by 2UE, 2GB and most news bulletins.

HE may be a Labor hero but Gough Whitlam’s legacy is so strong even Liberal politicians want to re-name a city in his honour.

Labor’s Blacktown mayor Stephen Bali applied to name a new suburb and a new North West Rail Link station after the late Gough Whitlam last week.

But his Liberal colleagues want to go further and make Blacktown Gough’s town by calling it Whitlam City…

This story looked at the cost to be in the race to be mayor of Willoughby.

Mayoral candidates in a north shore council area are splashing more than $100,000 campaigning for a role that pays just $50,000 a year.

Data from the NSW electoral commission has revealed Willoughby mayor hopefuls spent up to $112,060 last year campaigning for the top job, leading many to question whether it had become the domain of the elite.

I covered the NSW Budget for the 20 Newslocal mastheads in 2014 and 2015 and 2017.

And here’s a story about the history of Chinese Restaurants in Blacktown!

Family-owned Chinese restaurants came to western Sydney in the late 1970s, and many are still rocking the same decor — and staff — more than 40 years later.

Even the prices barely seemed to have changed, with some restaurants still offering wine by the glass for only a few dollars.

Data Journalism

I’ve been working as a data journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald since December 2017. I worked for Newslocal & Newscorp from October 2015 – December 2017 as a data journalist and began working as a journalist as an intern at the Manly Daily in 2012, joining Newslocal in 2013.

In March 2016, I participated in the Walkley Editors Lab to find and tell stories with data where we developed a comment sweeper prototype.

Data story examples:

My stories for the Herald are available here and cover a wide range of topics, including inequality in Australia, political expenses, mass surveillanceSpace explained, the great crime decline, the price fall and increase in rental property across Sydney

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Back in August 2017 a three-part data series covering ViolenceProperty, and Drug crime was published online and in print for the Daily Telegraph as well as 20 local newspapers across Sydney and the Central Coast. The story was picked up by radio, and TV.

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Using the FuelCheck API in September 2017, I looked at the number of times all NSW Petrol stations were updating their prices in this story. I found more than 600 stations, including one named as the cheapest in Sydney, had not updated their prices for more than a month.

In March 2017 I wrote a group story based on NSW Health statistics that found across NSW public hospitals elective C-sections are performed at about half the rate of private hospitals, who are not bound by NSW Health directives.

This story about how men go AWOL when called up for domestic duty used 2016 census data to show by postcode where chores are not a priority anymore.

I ran the numbers on participation in sport and the total amount awarded in sports grants to different codes in NSW here.

This story about hundreds of people in Sydney’s wealthy eastern suburbs paying zero net tax but claiming on average, $87,000 in deductions to manage their tax affairs used Google fusion tables (example screenshot below as fusion tables don’t like WordPress).

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Domestic violence rates are officially at their lowest in NSW on the North Shore but still the women’s shelters in the area are full. My story showed ADVO and police reported assault data doesn’t always add up to easy answers.

This story broke down how much state MPs spend sending newsletters.

In another article, I broke down how much local councils spend going to conferences.

My analysis of ABS statistics picked up there was a man drought on the north shore of Sydney. The story was hit on more than 10,000 times, featured a simple interactive map like below and had radio station Kiis 1065 interested.

Poker machines in NSW turnover about $70 billion, wrote a group story using data from annual reports, ABS data, welfare payments and unemployment data sources.

The amounts spent by the major parties in the 2015 NSW election campaign were detailed in this story, showing how much campaigns on the north shore cost for Liberals.

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Investigative data Journalist 

Sydney Morning Herald December 2017 – Present

∞ Data and investigative reporting for Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Working with journalists on stories in many categories including health, education, transport, city planning, the environment, the economy, and politics.

∞ Research, analysis, interviews and writing for a broad audience focused on data-driven news and long-form journalism.

∞ Developing data and human sources from commercial and other sources for exclusive stories.

Data Journalist / Senior Journalist

Newslocal / Hills Shire Times / Rouse Hill Times / Hornsby Advocate October 2015 – December 2017

∞ Group reporting for Newslocal (20 community newspapers) including the NSW budget in 2014, 2015 & 2017, as well as Daily Telegraph & other group campaign-related stories.

∞ Research, interviews and writing for an online and print newspaper audience reporting on local, state and federal politics, police, transport & general news.

∞ Data journalism (one-day-a-week) for Newscorp and Newslocal including regional campaign stories/data for the Daily Telegraph and other mastheads.

∞ Developed data journalism NewsU editorial development program for NewsCorp national metro mastheads, presenting the course beginning in November 2017.

∞ Developing & adapting digital tools for wider use within Newscorp (Python scraping, Google tools like Fusion tables, Excel, Tableau, IBM Watson Analytics).

University Tutor

Sydney University August – December 2022

Journalism tutor at Sydney University

Macleay College Sydney 2018 – 2021

∞ Wrote the data journalism course for Macleay College in 2018 and was a lecturer and tutor there.

University of Technology Sydney (UTS)  August 2017 – 2018

∞ Teaching two classes of UTS journalism students basic data skills including Excel, data cleaning and research plus the use of tools such as Tableau.

Senior Journalist

North Shore Times January 2015 – October 2015

∞ Political, police & senior news reporter working on a bi-weekly newspaper producing 8 – 10 news stories each week.

∞ Covered four state electorates, two federal seats and a local council.

Senior Journalist

Blacktown Advocate May 2014 – December 2014

∞ Senior reporter covering politics, sports and general news.

∞ Renamed Blacktown City to “Gougham” City (in a headline) during a debate about Gough Whitlam’s legacy.

Journalist

Hills Shire Times January 2014 – May 2014

∞ A weekly diet of restaurant reviews, peppered with breaking news, local business chamber views and police clues.

∞ Use and slight abuse of News Corp systems: Methode, News Machine, Cyber and PhotoDiary.

Journalist

Rouse Hill Times March 2013 – January 2014

∞ Political and general news reporter.

Journalist – Intern

Manly Daily November 2012 – January 2013

∞ General news reporter/intern.

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Production Manager

Onion Media Group September 2011 – March 2013

∞ Production wizardry, casting talent and spellbinding pitches for several feature films.

∞ Supervised, scheduled, budgeted and assigned duties to crew for films, ads, corporate videos and documentaries.

∞ Worked within tight pants and budgets to create high-quality broadcast content.

∞ Wrote pitch documents for content or funding opportunities such as MIPCOM.

Sales Executive

Village Roadshow  July 2008 – August 2011

∞ Presentations, reports, quarterly business reviews and several successful inter-office reviews of high-quality microwavable menus.

∞ Relationship management of national and local accounts in retail and rental channels for clients such as Civic Video and Quickflix. Monthly sales presentations to these clients.