My recommended tools for data journalism. Carefully selected and frequently used by myself. I categorized these tools in three phases of data journalism: Data finding, data cleaning and data visualisation.

Data finding

ScraperWiki

• Write your own scraper in Ruby/Python or request data (read: pay someone to scrape).

Scraper (plugin)

• Plugin for Chrome browser to scrape web pages to Google Spreadsheets

Silk

• Find, play around and visualise data. Spreadsheet data in wikipedia form, uploaded by users. Also, a nice way to store your data.

Data cleaning

CometDocs

• Transform documents to spreadsheets. Not perfect, but saves a lot of time.

Excel

• Essential software for each data journalist.

Google Refine

• Great tool for mass editting data. Not for calculations, but specifically data cleaning.

Mr. Data Converter

• Transform data from one format to another: HTML, XML, JSON, MySQL, Ruby, PHP, Python.

Data visualisation

ColorBrewer

• What colors do you need to use? ColowBrewer categorizes color scales in sequential, diverging and qualitative color schemes.

D3.js

• An extensive library for data visualisation. Keep in mind: a lot of programming.

FusionCharts

• Visualizes data from XML to Flash or HTML5 graphics.

Fusion Tables

• Visualisation tool, especially for maps. Also for line, bar, pie graphs, scatter plots and network visualisations, but not great.

Fusion Tables Layer Wizard

• Want to optimize your Fusion Tables map, this is the tool. Generates an HTML document.

Gephi

• Fast and easy networks visualisations

Google Charts

• Easy and fast charts made with the Google Charts API. Through Google Spreadsheets (embeddable charts) or the Charts Playground (self-hosted)

Google Maps Style Wizard

• Tool for styling a Google Map. Customize labels and colors.

HighCharts

• Completely Javascript-based visualisation library.

Raphaël

• Vector-based library for drawing graphics. Not easyily learned.

SHP Escape

• Essential for converting SHP files to KML’s. You need Fusion Tables to make this work