News: how local do you want it?

Over at the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Mark Schaver is looking at Adrian Holovaty's new just-released project, Everyblock. Schaver, who writes the Depth Reporting blog on the paper's website, is a data guru who does and promotes computer-assisted and investigative reporting. Holovaty is a data guru who has come up with some of the most innovative new data projects, including his Chicago Crime database. The new project is compiling block-by-block data from three cities, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, and will add more.

So it's interesting that Schaver has questions about the relevance of all this data, in EveryBlock, Heath Ledger and the Pothole Paradox:

I'm ostensibly a data person, but browsing raw data, while it can be worthwhile, isn't nearly as compelling to me as the sudden, unexplained death of a 28-year-old movie star.

Good stuff.