Wait, what is this?

This site will (hopefully) host somewhat up-to-date public data about the Spokane area for local journalists, community members and other folks to use.

I'll be attempting to replicate the work I do for my day job here and build out indicators and dashboards for Spokane-area data.

Okay, but why? And who are you?

Who? I'm Kai Teoh, a news application developer and data journalist at Newsday - a regional/local paper on Long Island, New York.

I used to work at the Spokesman-Review and was their news application developer, and worked closely with Spokesman reporters on data-related reporting. You can read more about that history (and Know Spokane's original incarnation) here.

Why? I loved my time in the Spokane area and I believe the folks there deserve better access to public data. Despite working and living on Long Island, I've spent the past two years still doing data and development work for Spokane newsrooms (did you use KHQ's election site? Their stimulus calculator? Maybe some of their COVID data? 😊).

Why should I trust you?

Fair question. I'll try and make the data source as clear as possible, and it's my intent to make all the analysis/math public too.

But this is a side project I'm working on during my free time, and so a lot of design might be missing and the github repository is nowhere near ready for public.

Eventually, I'd like to make this a project that other data-oriented folks can contribute to. Would love some designer help as well.

I'm a journalist, can I-

Take this data and use it however you see fit. Reach out to me if you have questions, let me know if you need help analyzing/parsing the data, or if you see a dataset on some site that you'd like converted into a more usable format - happy to help in any way I can.

One of the projects I've always regretted not finishing was building an education/schools database for Eli Francovich when he was the SR's education reporter.

Can I get the raw data?

I plan on making all the data work I do here downloadable, but I've not built anything to that end yet. I'm toying with the idea of using Datasette to power all of this, but that might not be ready anytime soon.

Right now the best bet might be to grab it from the source (hopefully I've added the proper sourcing by now). Otherwise, you can email me or inspect the page and grab the json data.

Why is (x data) outdated/missing?

A few possibilities.

If it's a dataset that's already on the site -

1. My scripts ran into an error and I haven't had the nights/weekends to troubleshoot them
2. It might not be a dataset I've automated, updating it manually takes time
3. I'm working on the automation scripts, it's just not ready yet

If it's a dataset that's not on the site

1. I might not know about it, please shoot me a message
2. I'm working on it, but it's taking time to convert scripts I wrote for my day job

Why only Spokane county data?

I'd like to include more geographic areas, with varying granularity including data by metro area, subcounty, place, ZCTA, PUMA, other counties (like Kootenai) etc as well. But again, this takes time.

I'd love to hear what areas or how granular you'd like the data to be though! Again, shoot me a message.

I'd like to help, can I contribute now?

Possibly? Probably? If you've got technical skills and time to spare - shoot me a message.

If you'd like to buy me a coffee:

I want more history!

I used to work at the Spokesman-Review and along with another (former) SR reporter Rachel Alexander, and we collaborated on a column for the paper called Know Spokane. It was a continuation of the data-driven journalism that Mike Tigas, Ryan Pitts and Gina Boysun spearheaded at the Spokesman.

We used data to try and offer Spokanites another way to understand Spokane. Using public data, or original data collection/aggregation, we explored topics such as local cuisine, road quality, reading habits and even built a little app that recommended local beer for folks based on what they already enjoy.

The monthly column was short lived as the editor, Rob Curley, felt that the clicks weren't worth our effort. Know Spokane was subsequently shuttered, and http://data.spokesman.com/ was culled (I believe SR's past data work/databases was wiped as well).

Are you available for hire?

Huh. Let's talk.