MySQL guide for journalists

One of the biggest issues for journalists in the process of creating narratives based on large datasets is how to manage and process great amounts of data at once.

To aid brazilian journalists in this job, I’ve written a step-by-step guide on how to use MySQL to find knowledge worth reporting amidst dozens of millions of data points.

Since the audience for a project like this is a non-technical one, it’s important to explain in detail every step and be objective on how every piece of tech advice is actually useful for data reporting. With this in mind, I have written the text focusing on the metaphor “data interview”.

To quote a fragment of the text (translated to English): “Freedom is the keyword here. When you interview numbers, you need to feel as comfortable as if you were interviewing people. Portuguese proficiency and knowledge of the subject at hand are essential in a regular interview. The difference is that in this new interaction with information, instead of talking portuguese, you will talk SQL.”

Read the guide (in portuguese) here: hub.laury.dev/mysql-para-jornalistas