Diving in and making sense of Census demographic and economic data

The U.S. Bureau of the Census is the nation's premier data-gathering and dissemination agency. The bureau, along with sister data agencies such as the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, collects and analyzes data on a wide range of demographic and economic topics. These include everything from the decennial census to tabulations and surveys covering employment, wages, government finances, housing, foreign trade, criminal justice and much more. But few reporters know about this cornucopia of information and how it can be used for stories. Thanks to a grant from the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University brought together 17 journalism data power users and Census subject area specialists to do 40-minute how-to presentations on these topics.

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