Anuj here. My co-founder Amir (Aazo11) and I are building HiGeorge (https://hi-george.com/). We make localized drag-and-drop data visualizations so that all publishers, even the small ones, can better leverage data in their storytelling. Think Tableau with all the necessary data attached.
At the onset of the pandemic Amir and I were looking for local data on the spread of the virus. We visited the sites of large national newsrooms like the NYTimes and were impressed by the quality of data visualizations and maps, but they lacked the geographic granularity for our own neighborhood.
We then turned to our local newsrooms but found they presented data in tables and lists that made it difficult to comprehend the virus’ spread and trends. We wondered why. After talking to local journalists and publishers, we found that newsrooms simply do not have the resources to make sense of large datasets.
Public datasets are hard to clean, poorly structured, and constantly updated. One publisher explained to us that she would refresh her state health department’s website 5 times a day waiting for updated COVID data, then manually download a CSV and clean it in Excel. This process could take hours, and it needed to happen every day.
This is where HiGeorge comes in. We clean and aggregate public datasets and turn them into auto-updating data visualizations that anyone can instantly use with a simple copy/paste. Our data visualizations can be drag-and-dropped into articles, allowing news publishers to offer compelling data content to their communities.
Check out a few versions of what we’re doing with customers -- COVID-19 data reporting at North Carolina Health News [1], COVID-19 vaccine site mapping at SFGATE [2], real-time crime reporting in Dallas, TX [3], and police use of force at Mission Local [4].
Today, HiGeorge works with dozens of newsrooms across the country. Our visualizations have driven a 2x increase in pageviews and a 75% increase in session duration for our partner publishers. We charge a monthly subscription for access to our data visualization library – a fraction of the cost of an in-house data engineer. In the long run, we are building HiGeorge so that it becomes the single place to collaborate on and publish data content.
We’d love to hear from the HN community and we’ll be hanging out in the comments if you have any questions or feedback.
[1]https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2021/02/09/coronavir... [2] https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/vaccine-sites-San-Fra... [3] https://lakehighlands.advocatemag.com/2021/02/data-crime-tre... [4] https://missionlocal.org/crime-data/
by Andrey
Azimov