ONA Weekly #557: Wrangling Spreadsheets, PDFs And All That Data

By on April 16, 2025

Wrangling spreadsheets, PDFs and all that data

AI won’t solve everything, but it might just help streamline your data workflow and ultimately boost the scale, scope and impact of your investigative journalism. Join us on April 30 for the new training Advanced AI Data Journalism Tools, a hands-on look at useful tools to process and make sense of spreadsheets, PDFs and large volumes of data. No hype here—just a practical session with specific use cases and tips you can immediately apply to your work.

This training session is open to all, regardless of experience level. Registration is free for ONA members and $25 for non-members.

Share your award-worthy science reporting

What does Excellence in Science Reporting look like? We’re looking for projects in a variety of formats, from data visualization to audio, that stand out in their coverage of areas such as health and wellness, natural science or STEM education. Submit your work to the 2025 Online Journalism Awards by May 15.

As you reflect and gather notes on your best projects from the past year, find inspiration from recent OJA honorees like Science News’ Electricity Saved My Brain (Feature, 2024), Scientific American’s TikTok channel (Excellence in Social Media Engagement, 2024), STAT’s Denied by AI: Consequences for Sick and Vulnerable Americans (Investigative Journalism, 2024) and Vox Media’s What did dinosaurs sound like? (Audio Digital Storytelling, 2023). 

“Unconference” means you shape the experience

Leaders from news organizations large and small, from Connecticut to Wisconsin to California, are converging in Detroit from May 19-20 for a two-day summit all about AI’s impact on newsroom leadership and culture. The summit is part big-picture discussions for inspiration, part focused unconference sessions aimed at collaboration and solutions. Come ready to contribute and explore different perspectives with your peers. Register now for the ONA x Newsroom Robots AI Leadership Summit.

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Your whole journalism workflow covered

Transform your workflow with Canva’s new templates. Plan in whiteboards, write in docs, and build impactful presentations. Hot tip: Use category filters to quickly find presentation, doc, or whiteboard templates that fit your needs. Elevate your craft visually.

Mark your calendar

Career opportunities

ONA’s Career Center is an excellent resource for jobs, fellowships and internships in digital journalism. Recent postings include:

On our radar

Support ONA

There are many ways to help sustain ONA’s mission to drive innovation in digital journalism: