How I used Claude Code in a real data journalism project (kschaul.com)

In a recent endeavor, a team of data journalists successfully utilized Claude Code, an advanced AI tool, to streamline the consolidation and analysis of disparate federal government AI use cases. These use cases, required to be published by various agencies, often appear on different websites, in various formats, and with inconsistent labeling, making it a challenging task to gather and standardize the data. By crafting a specific prompt for Claude Code, the journalists were able to automate the process of locating these resources, ultimately saving significant time and effort over manual consolidation. The use of Claude Code in this project underscores the growing significance of “agentic” AI systems within the data journalism landscape. The AI facilitated the coding and execution of scripts needed to aggregate and clean the datasets, which otherwise would have been a tedious manual process. While the journalist maintained oversight to ensure accuracy and reliability, the AI’s capability to perform repetitive tasks and generate audit-friendly solutions proved to be a game changer. This application highlights the potential for AI/ML tools to enhance efficiency in data-driven journalism, while also emphasizing the importance of human oversight in critical tasks.