Paul Bradshaw
paulbradshaw.bsky.social
Paul Bradshaw
@paulbradshaw.bsky.social
Data journalist and course leader, MA Data Journalism at Birmingham City University
Too often discussion around using AI is “either/or” — an assumption that you either use AI for a task, or do it yourself. But there’s another option: do both.

onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/02/02/p...
Parallel prompting: another way to avoiding deskilling with AI
Photo by Markus Winkler Too often discussion around using AI is “either/or” — an assumption that you either use AI for a task, or do it yourself. But there’s another option: do bo…
onlinejournalismblog.com
February 2, 2026 at 5:48 PM
At a journalism educators’ conference last year lecturers were asked why they didn’t use AI. The answers provided a useful starting point for reflection…

onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/01/19/i...
“I don’t want it to be easy” and other objections to using AI
In September I took part in a panel at the African Journalism Education Network conference. The most interesting moment came when members of the audience were asked if they didn’t use AI — an…
onlinejournalismblog.com
January 26, 2026 at 1:08 PM
🚦 New post! I've written before about 'journey prompting' and 'destination prompting' - now I explain how you can combine both to address the risks of deskilling that come with #AI

onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/01/13/h...
How to stop AI making you stupid: hybrid destination-journey prompting
Last month I wrote about destination and journey prompts, and the strategy of designing AI prompts to avoid deskilling. In some situations a third, hybrid approach can also be useful. In this post …
onlinejournalismblog.com
January 15, 2026 at 7:16 PM
I’ve published an extract from my book chapter on data, data visualization and interactives within news — only with more words and pictures onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/01/06/d...
Data, data visualization and interactives within news
In this extract from a book chapter in the new Routledge Companion to Visual Journalism, I look at how the explosion of data as a source for journalists, and the separation of content from interfac…
onlinejournalismblog.com
January 11, 2026 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by Paul Bradshaw
AI would be impacting our lives far less if only Google hadn't become such a shit search engine
December 21, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Reposted by Paul Bradshaw
Grift and corruption. This just begins to dig into it all. Gift link:
The Trump Family Business Empire Is Growing. We Mapped Out 268 Pieces of It.
www.wsj.com/politics/ele...
The Trump Family Business Empire Is Growing. We Mapped Out 268 Pieces of It.
A second-term boom in crypto and other areas has created billions in new wealth for the first family.
www.wsj.com
December 18, 2025 at 10:58 AM
Here’s how to spot double counting in your data story — and what to do about it.

onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/12/16/d... #ddj
Double counting: how to spot it and how to avoid it
Double counting — counting something more than once in data — can present particular risks for journalists, leading to an incorrect total or proportion. Here’s how to spot it — and what to do about…
onlinejournalismblog.com
December 17, 2025 at 12:35 PM
A much-needed guide by Ides Debruyne to the business side of teaming up to pursue an investigation www.journalismfund.eu/news/plea-be... - we need more guidance like this
Plea For Better Negotiations in Cross-border Journalism | Journalismfund Europe
BRUSSELS - How and when does a journalist or team of journalists start negotiations with a media company? And how do they not only get their international cross-border investigative journalism publish...
www.journalismfund.eu
October 3, 2025 at 12:35 PM
Reposted by Paul Bradshaw
Crime on buses is thankfully pretty uncommon.

But which routes in the West Midlands are the worst affected according to #FOI:
Freedom of Information in the news – week ending 29/8/2025
A refused or unanswered Freedom of Information request can still be a story. (But there's some successes too...
clairemiller.net
September 2, 2025 at 4:31 PM
“Maintain a kill checklist. Try to kill your own finding. Publish what survived.” And many other tips
www.dutchosintguy.com/post/stop-ca...
Stop Calling It OSINT
A field rant about shortcuts, ego, and other creative ways to waste everyone’s timeLet’s just say the quiet part out loud: most of what’s sold as “OSINT” online is cosplay. It’s people screenshotting ...
www.dutchosintguy.com
August 29, 2025 at 7:15 PM
“GPT-5, even in ‘Thinking’ and ‘Pro’ modes, was a considerable downgrade when compared with the capabilities demonstrated by GPT o4-mini-high”

www.bellingcat.com/resources/20...
LLMs vs. Geolocation: GPT-5 performs worse than other AI models - bellingcat
Bellingcat challenged the latest models—Grok, GPT and Gemini—on geolocation tasks, revealing GPT-5 as a clear downgrade.
www.bellingcat.com
August 17, 2025 at 11:09 AM
Stop anthropomorphising AI. It’s not “biased” in the way you think.
onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/05/07/w...
Why I’m no longer saying AI is “biased”
TLDR; Saying “AI has biases” or “biased training data” is preferable to “AI is biased” because it reduces the risk of anthropomorphism and focuses on potential s…
onlinejournalismblog.com
August 6, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Reposted by Paul Bradshaw
2. Learn about in-depth investigations from journalists @theguardian.com and @theexamination.org

3. Hone your data skills with @paulbradshaw.bsky.social and the power of story-telling from @healthequals.bsky.social

4. Hear the economic case for reducing inequalities from @davefinch.bsky.social
April 11, 2025 at 9:03 AM
A new AI function is being added to Google Sheets that could make most other functions redundant. But is it any good? Here’s what I’ve learned in the first week…

onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/04/10/g...
Google Sheets has a new AI function — how does it perform on classification tasks?
A new AI function is being added to Google Sheets that could make most other functions redundant. But is it any good? And what can it be used for? Here’s what I’ve learned in the first week… AI has…
onlinejournalismblog.com
April 10, 2025 at 3:16 PM
🤐 If you can't get access to public data, or information provided by the authorities is not credible, what do you do, how do you obtain data for a story?
Here are some techniques used by reporters around the world

onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/03/25/h...
How do I get data if my country doesn’t publish any?
Spotlight photo by Paul Green on Unsplash In many countries public data is limited, and access to data is either restricted, or information provided by the authorities is not credible. So how do yo…
onlinejournalismblog.com
April 2, 2025 at 8:36 AM
I wonder how much fun the writer/sub had identifying when to use blond vs blonde in this piece. Either way, it’s a great example (replace them all with blanks for a cruel subbing test) www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
The blond advantage: fair hair completely changed my life – but is it time to give it up?
When I first dyed my hair, the difference in how I was treated made me assume life got better the more you lightened your look. I have now spent years testing the theory ...
www.theguardian.com
March 18, 2025 at 1:26 PM
Reposted by Paul Bradshaw
Further important 🐹📈 data journalism from @louisashworth.bsky.social and cartography from @theboysmithy.ft.com about the cost of small caged mammals (scm) in the UK: www.ft.com/content/f1cb...
March 13, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Reposted by Paul Bradshaw
Scottish public bodies have been warned not to take #FOI court action they are likely to lose…advice that could probably apply more widely.

FOI stories that mostly avoided this this week...
Freedom of Information in the news – week ending 25/10/2024 – #FOIFriday – Words + Numbers
Post published:October 25, 2024 Post category:Freedom of Information Reading time:8 mins read Freedom of Information in the news – week ending 25/10/2024 – #FOIFriday Scottish public bodies have been warned not to take court action they are likely to lose…advice that would probably apply to pu...
clairemiller.net
March 13, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Important reporting by my colleague Alex Homer on police use of a Clearing House-style #FOI unit.
Journalists identified, potential media attention discussed, and forces advised to withdraw previous response

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Police FOI unit dubbed 'authoritarian censor'
Campaigners voice concern as an investigation shows a police unit blocked requests for information.
www.bbc.co.uk
March 6, 2025 at 7:21 PM
Research: people are “better at rating false news as false than at rating true news as true”
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Spotting false news and doubting true news: a systematic review and meta-analysis of news judgements - Nature Human Behaviour
Pfänder and Altay conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of 67 experimental articles, showing that people discern true from false news with ease. When making mistakes, people err on the side of...
www.nature.com
March 6, 2025 at 10:32 AM
Reposted by Paul Bradshaw
‼️ DEADLINE EXTENSION!

🏆 Sigma Awards 2025

As with previous editions, the award will maintain its no-category rule and will have experts in data journalism from around the world constituting its jury and prize committee.

Deadline: March 7, 2025
More: https://twp.ai/1TaJrR
Submissions Open for 2025 Sigma Awards, GIJN New Host of Data Journalism Award
GIJN is proud to announce that it is the new administrator for the annual SIGMA data journalism awards, which are now accepting submissions for the 2025 round.
twp.ai
March 4, 2025 at 7:30 AM
I’ve put together a crib sheet of 7 techniques for journalists to get better results from genAI tools

onlinejournalismblog.com/2025/02/19/7...
7 prompt design techniques for generative AI every journalist should know
Tools like ChatGPT might seem to speak your language, but they actually speak a language of probability and educated guesswork. You can make yourself better understood — and get more professional r…
onlinejournalismblog.com
February 19, 2025 at 1:20 PM
I’m speaking at this event on AI and inclusive journalism next Wednesday if you fancy tuning/popping in (New Broadcasting House, London)
February 13, 2025 at 5:32 PM