Having journalists in the newsroom who have technical expertise in data analysis and digital forensics is invaluable — though sometimes a luxury for local news media today. Leveraging data during newsgathering and in support of investigative conclusions makes for sturdy journalism that resonates with audiences.
On Nov. 21, 2025, The New York Times published “Satellite Data Reveals How the U.S. Navy Is Deployed Near Venezuela,” a data-driven investigation into the U.S. Navy’s buildup of warships in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela. It showed a measurable increase in the number of naval ships deployed to the region, raising questions about what the Pentagon was planning, why the military was sending ships ill-equipped for anti-drug-trafficking operations, and whether it was a precursor to war.
Riley Mellen, a video journalist and member of The Times’ visual investigations team, authored the report, with support from other team members, including graphics by Lazaro Gamio. Data was fundamental to the reporting.
“We have a long-standing relationship with Ollie Ballinger, a university lecturer in the U.K. who does computational research as it applies to journalism. In the fall, he tipped us off to a data model he had to detect the location of naval vessels in satellite images,” Mellen said. “Normally, this is a Sisyphean task. These satellite images cover hundreds or thousands of square miles. If you think about a Navy ship — any ship — they may be less than 200 feet long. So, searching for these tiny pinpoints in satellite images could take weeks, months or even years. Ollie reached out to us and asked if we wanted to take his model for a spin.”
They were able to identify U.S. Navy vessels in the region through careful analysis of size, scale, color and the characteristics of different ships, such as destroyers and aircraft carriers.
“At that point, we had this body of data, and then we worked with the graphics team to visualize it. My colleague put together an amazing map and cinemograph that shows Navy ship detections popping up over time,” Mellen said. “And what that showed us was, despite what the military was saying — that they were there to combat drug trafficking — the ships were not seen around any of the main drug-trafficking routes of the Caribbean. They were instead clustered around Venezuela.”
Mellen got his professional start in data and digital forensics fresh out of college. He went to work for Dataminr, a third-party that provides breaking news verification services to news media clientele. “For example, if gunshots were reported in a neighborhood or a fire was reported, we would use open sourcing to verify the information and then package that information as alerts to clients [like The New York Times].”
Mellen thrived in the role and worked for Dataminr for nine years. By then, The Times had started its visual investigations team, and others, like The Washington Post, were following suit. Wanting to further explore open-source data-driven investigations, Mellen started an award-winning blog, “Line of Actual Control.”
“I’d pick a story from somewhere in the world — that I thought was being under-covered or just not as deeply as it should be — and I’d try to tell the story using exclusively public information or data accessible to regular folks like you and me. That was a really good initial exercise into open-source investigative journalism,” he reflected.
The culture of the 25-or-so-member visual investigations team reflects the larger Times’ newsroom ethos — “quite collaborative,” Mellen said. It’s made up of data specialists, editors, managers, graphic and video editors, motion graphics animators and reporters.
Working with digital assets — data, photography, video, maps — requires verification about authenticity and veracity. That can be done through analysis of the asset’s metadata or by analog methods, such as tracking down the source of the image or video or looking for known location landmarks, like trees, buildings or traffic.
Mellen described digital forensics as a hunt for “digital breadcrumbs” that together reveal a story. The team leverages open-source data, social media, satellite imagery and tools like Google Earth. Social media is a digital goldmine for finding photos, footage and sources. To a limited extent, Mellen uses AI for data scraping or identifying coding errors.
“AI hasn’t actually played a massive role in our newsgathering and news verification so far, though that could obviously change,” Mellen said.
“Digital forensics illuminates things that are otherwise opaque,” he added. “The story of the naval ships in the Caribbean is a great example of this. Twenty to 30 years ago — before the advent of publicly available, relatively high-resolution satellite imagery — there’s no way this story could have been made. … Now, this imagery can be churned through using computer programs, providing us with a fascinating new window into the military, government and police work that would otherwise be opaque. Data allows a window into what hundreds or thousands of people may be experiencing at once, whether it’s a natural disaster or a protest — coverage that reporters would have to otherwise bite off one or two sources at a time.”
Data reporting in the spotlight
Erica Peterson is a veteran public-media journalist, editor and newsroom manager. In 2020, she became the managing editor of the then-fledgling Mountain State Spotlight, a nonprofit newsroom in West Virginia. After several years in the role, Peterson decided to explore other professional pursuits, while maintaining her relationship with Mountain State Spotlight as editor-at-large.
Now, she also runs a fellowship program at Cincinnati Public Radio.
“I edit for public radio stations around the country when they need an extra hand. I also edit for a regional website called 100 Days in Appalachia,” she said. “I also work to create civic information and voter-guide products for newsrooms.”
In her capacity as editor-at-large, Peterson embarked on a data-driven reporting project, with grant support from the “Data-Driven Reporting Project,” a partnership of the Google News Initiative (GNI) and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
“I wanted to find a way to do some more data-driven reporting, particularly on foster care, which is a really important and troubled system in West Virginia that, in my view, had not been getting enough attention — especially from a data lens,” Peterson said. “I had obtained access to these federal data sets, which I was very excited about, but I could not even open them. There were so many huge programs that I couldn’t open — and even if I could, I didn’t know what I’d do with the data.”
She enrolled in a data training program at the University of Southern California (USC), which enabled her to access the data and begin analyzing it. The story the data revealed was how federal monies — $7 million earmarked for adults who had aged out of the foster care system, to help them establish their adult lives — had been mishandled by the state and sent back to the federal government.
“A lot of these data skills are things that every journalist can learn. You don’t have to have ‘data journalist’ in front of your name,” Peterson said. “The things I think are most powerful about the stories I’ve reported were the underpinned data, but also the interviews I had with real people — specifically former foster youth who had been in this system. And these stories, in my mind, would just not have landed if not for the real people behind them.”
Collaborations and crowdsourcing
“We’re a small nonprofit, with barely 40 people,” Jennifer Coogan described the team at Bellingcat’s U.S. arm, for which she serves as executive director. Bellingcat is renowned for its open-source methods and data expertise. They’ve shared that expertise through training workshops at major newsrooms, such as The New York Times and CNN. This year, they plan to deploy workshops for local newsrooms.
For impactful investigations, data is a powerful tool in the toolbox, but storytelling ability is equally important, Coogan said.
“Some organizations can tell a story very powerfully. Evident Media is one of our closest partners. They are masters of documentary storytelling, in long and short formats. … To have a partner that can speak the language of social video is invaluable,” said Coogan.
One of the initiatives she’s focused on this year is developing more partnerships with local news outlets across the country, which can bring storytelling and social expertise to the relationship.
“They’re socially savvy and understand how content is transmitted nowadays. They understand which content packages work best for different platforms. And then we also look at risk appetite,” Coogan said. “Are they willing to tell a story and look into things that others aren’t looking into?
“There is a traditional style of journalism where you want to scoop and beat the competition, where you want to hoard bylines. But what I think we’re seeing now is that if we’re going to survive, we need to stand together. We want to work with partners that believe in that credo.”
“We did a project in Ukraine, where we mapped civilian harm,” Coogan recalled. Citizens reported on their friends, loved ones and neighbors who had been impacted by Russia’s war on the nation. They kept the reports in spreadsheets, but the volume of data became unwieldy, so they developed a tool — Atlos — which allowed them to better log, tag and store this massive amount of information.
“We are now using Atlos in a new context — collecting videos of ICE and CPB interactions,” Coogan said. “Evident Media and CalMatters used that data. But when you’re collaborating on large sets of data externally, it requires good data management that is often facilitated by a custom tool.”
Not all of their reporting accomplishments are due to technical expertise. People are still critical to journalism.
“I would love to see local newsrooms figure out that many of our breakthroughs come from our community,” Coogan said. “We have a Discord server with 30,000 people. When there’s a need for brute-force data dumpster diving — like we’re seeing with the Epstein files — we have the benefit of this mobilized online community that can go searching with us. … That is something local newsrooms do a pretty good job of — knowing their audience and fostering community. So, if you’ve got an investigation you want to do and not a lot of resources, you should appeal to your readership. Tell them, ‘This is what we’re looking into,’ and welcome their help. There are entire communities out there that would be willing to do that kind of collaboration.”
Gretchen A. Peck is a contributing editor to Editor & Publisher. She has reported for E&P since 2010 and welcomes comments at gretchenapeck@gmail.com.
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