This is a great thread from Ben Casselman, economics reporter at The New York Times and formerly FiveThirtyEight, on working with data.
Casselman is careful to note that he’s not an economist and that losing sight of that would lead him to err. But the approach he outlines — humble, integrative, quantitative — is why I suspect analytical journalists can outperform experts in some circumstances in terms of reaching better empirical assessments. See here, here, and here.
beyond the times 