Tools
for the data journalist

I use a lot of tools, both open source and paid. But it can be daunting when you're just getting started. I remember feeling like I was behind everyone else, and worried that I'd choose the wrong thing to start learning.
Here's some good, free tools that won't be a waste of your time:

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• Tabula. For when you need to get data out of PDFs.
• Google sheets if you don’t have Excel. You'll want to learn how to do formulas such as figuring percent change and how to do a pivot table.
• R and R studio. Free statistical software used by data journalists.
  
  • Get R here: https://www.r-project.org/
  • Get R Studio here: https://www.rstudio.com/
  • Learn how to use R here: A tutorial series I put together for reporters. We worked together to learn R.
• Qgis. Open source mapping. Here's a good video series on learning it. It's a little out of date, but still excellent.

I also use Python quite a bit. This website was created with Python-based microframework called Flask. There's a lot of great tools out there. The list above is a good place to start.