Graduating with a master's in data journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, I have developed expertise in R and Python programming. My 13-year tenure as a political and data journalist in Vietnam has enriched my perspective in data-driven storytelling.
As a data fellow at the American Press Institute, I applied these skills to enhance local newsrooms' decision-making processes. My work at CNN as a data and graphics intern covered diverse topics from environmental impacts to health-related social issues. In addition, I have contributed to the Columbia Missourian as the Graphics Desk Supervisor, bringing complex stories to life through visual data interpretation.
This interactive map allows you to compare Census block groups in Boone County based on a series of key indicators of a community’s “social vulnerability” or capacity to adapt to challenges. The index can also be thought of as a way to quantify a community’s well-being and resilience.
This “adaptive capacity index” was based on existing research and created by Missourian data analyst Han Vu. The index uses the following measures to create an adaptive capacity percentage. The higher the percentage, the less vulnerable an area is to threats. You can click on any area in the map to read that community’s measures on a series of key factors:
+ Total Population
+ Percent of Population with No Vehicle Available
+ Percent of Population Unemployed
+ Percent of Population That Speaks English Less Than “Very Well”
+ Percent of Population Living in Mobile Homes
+ Percent of Population 25+ with Less than a High School degree
+ Percent non-white population
+ Per Capita Income...
Data holds great power for newsrooms to better understand their communities, but accessing and understanding it can be daunting. To aid local journalists in delivering meaningful news to their readers, I created a community dashboard using Census Bureau data.
This idea stemmed from my work with the Source Matters tool as a RJI Student Innovation Fellow partnered with the API Product Strategy team. Source Matters is one of API’s proprietary tools that supports local newsrooms in tracking sources for more fair and inclusive journalism.
The dashboard’s ultimate goal is to consolidate essential community indicators — like demographics, socioeconomic factors and others aligned with Source Matters’ metrics — in one place. This resource will serve as a convenient reference for local journalists whenever needed...
Vietnamese immigrants arrived in the US following a turbulent historical event in 1975, settling here for 47 years. Despite the birth of new generations, historical sorrow still dominates and shapes the tale of the Vietnamese in America.
A new storyline for the story is long overdue, especially when in recent years, many young Vietnamese talents, particularly those in the field of technology, have immigrated to the nation in search of the new American dream.
In this project, I get the most recent information on Vietnamese Americans from the 2021 American Community Survey (ACS), which was just published on September 15. I do this by using the R tidycensus package.
Combining information on Vietnamese people from numerous sources along with data collected since 1980, I created maps and charts to examine the situation of Vietnamese people in the US from a variety of angles: English Proficiency; Age; Education and Employment; Income and Poverty; Immigration Pathways and Naturalization; Unauthorized Immigrant Population; Health Coverage; Distribution by State and Key Cities.
The initiative was motivated by the Migration Policy Institute's study on Vietnamese immigrants in the U.S.
For this project, I collected exclusive evidence showing serious law violations of a real estate tycoon that lured tens of thousands of people to buy unsafe houses, leading to the man's prosecution.
Although only 231 apartments were allowed to be erected under the construction permission, this person's company built 1602 units, which was seven times the permitted number.
The lower than market price has attracted many people to buy houses here, despite many unsafe conditions. This had an impact on both safety and society.
Due to the excessive population concentration that outpaces planning, overloads infrastructure, there aren't enough schools for kids, and traffic jams happen every day.
The violation occurred in a so-called “model urban area” in Hanoi - the capital, and was detected by the authorities through inspection but they did nothing to address it.
After my article was published, many other newspapers got involved, and many violations in other projects of this businessman were also brought to light. The businessman was investigated and eventually prosecuted.
Several local officials were also disciplined and prosecuted.
One-on-one meeting with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s project manager to get feedback on using the Source Matters tool
API developed the tool Source Matters and launched it in 2021 to help lighten the load for reporters looking to track their sources. By utilizing natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, the tool examines each story after it is published, automatically detecting and extracting all the names of individuals who have been quoted or attributed. It pulls the names out for the journalist and then allows the journalist to log the source’s demographic information, after asking how the source identifies across a few different identity categories.
This year, we are working with a cohort of 12 local newsrooms that gained access to the tool for free, with the commitment to make their source data publicly available for transparency and accountability. We are also collecting feedback from these newsrooms to continue to improve the user experience of Source Matters.
The data collected from these newsrooms using the tool during testing periods yielded unsurprising results. It revealed that in most cases, conversations were predominantly dominated by white males between the ages of 35 and 54 who held official positions. However, each newsroom interpreted and reacted to the data differently...
Images of diggers on a dusty construction site amid the striking karsts has caused an escalating row | CREDIT: Hoang Duong/AFP
By Sarah Newey
IN BANGKOK and
Han Vu
IN HANOI
(Telegraph) - Ha Long Bay’s forested limestone islets and aquamarine waters have long drawn tourists seeking a snippet of paradise, but this week pictures of diggers and shipping containers on a dusty construction site amid the striking karsts have provoked an escalating row in Vietnam.
The huge government-approved project has reignited debates about the threat mass tourism and overdevelopment pose to the Unesco World Heritage site and raised questions about lax environmental protections in the “buffer zone” surrounding Ha Long Bay.
Jutting out into Bai Tu Long Bay, which borders Ha Long, the 318,000 square metre development plans to feature 451 villas, several seven-storey hotels and other services for about 2,500 residents, the Tien Phong newspaper reported this week.
The project was approved by the province in 2021, after Do Gia Capital paid 1.2 trillion dong (£40.4 million) at auction for the rights to the site.
"I'm going to tell the Columbians - who live their entire lives in the city, the things that they don't know about it, even though I'm a foreigner being here for just five months," was the thought I had in mind when I did this project.
Using R tidycensus and tidyverse packages, I pulled data from the Census Bureau to see how the city has changed from 1970 to 2020 in different aspects: median age, median income, crime rate, poverty rate, education, etc.
Take a look at the print version and interactive version of it.
I created this project to produce Missouri's Adaptive Capacity Score in 2020 to determine the resilience level of the state's community tracts. This project was inspired by Anthony Holmes's innitiative to create this index for Oregon in 2018.
The project uses R tidycensus to extract data from the Census Bureau on a variety of topics, including employment, housing, education, poverty, income, race, age, home value, and people with disabilities. In total, there are over 100 variables used in the project. To make it simple for audiences to see the index to the track level, an interactive map was created in R using leaflet package.
Used to be considered a taboo topic in Vietnam, the abuse of power of consulate personnel to increase visa service fees by double was hardly touched by mainstream media, despite the upset of Vietnamese people overseas.
I worked with Thai Duong, a Vietnamese Google engineer, to collect evidence and create a report showing that complaints about corruption happen in almost every Vietnamese Embassy overseas.
The article published in Thanhnien Newspaper created a massive buzz among Vietnamese communities overseas and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs staff, contributed to igniting the change in consular procedures.
As a personal contribution to public transparency, I volunteered with the Columbia Missourian to deploy this tracker to help the public track real estate development in the city.
This site was built based on a template developed by Jimmy McBroom and Kate Abbey-Lambertz as part of her Reynolds Journalism Institute.
