Journalist's Toolbox: What's New to the Site in 2026
In this video, Mike Reilley shares some of the updates to Journalist's Toolbox and what's ahead in 2026.
Custom GPT: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6862f0407e648191809ec5dd44ec3797-journalist-s-toolbox
Newsletter: https://journaliststoolbox.substack.com/
YouTube training videos: https://www.youtube.com/@journaliststoolbox/videos
Website: https://journaliststoolbox.ai/
Order book: https://www.routledge.com/The-Journalists-Toolbox-A-Guide-to-Digital-Reporting-and-AI/Reilley/p/book/9781032460208
Making Basic Charts in ChatGPT and Claude
In this video for the 2nd edition of "Data + Journalism", Mike Reilley shows you how to build basic static and interactive charts in ChatGPT, Claude and the Data Visualization Expert Custom GPT.
Exercise materials: https://bit.ly/datavideos2
Homicides data to download:
https://bit.ly/chicagohomicides24
Tools:
ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com
Data Visualization Expert: ChatGPT Custom GPT: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-szLI1DTZn-data-visualization-expert
Claude: https://claude.ai/
Prompt:
Create a static bar chart with the attached data. For the title, use “Chicago Homicides by Year (1990-2024)”. In the lower left corner, below the chart, place this text: “Source: Chicago Police Department | Chart/YOUR NAME”
Chapter 10 Gemini and NotebookLM Infographics
In this video for the 2nd edition of "Data + Journalism", Mike Reilley shows you how to build interactive and static charts, infographics and data dashboards using Google Gemini Pro Canvas, Claude and NotebookLM.
Exercise materials: https://bit.ly/datavideos2
Google Gemini Pro Canvas
https://gemini.google.com/
Homicides data link to visualize
https://bit.ly/chicagohomicides24
Mike’s newsletter: https://journaliststoolbox.substack.com/p/nov-11-data-security-tools-part-i
Prompts:
Build a vertical bar chart with the attached homicide data. Use this text for the title: "Chicago Homicides by Year (1990-2024)". In the lower left corner of the canvas, well below the X- and Y-axis, add this text: "Source: Chicago Police Department | Chart/Mike Reilley". Please use dark blue for the bars in the chart.
Build a horizontal dashboard with the attached homicide data. Use this text for the title: "Chicago Homicides by Year (1990-2024)". In the lower left corner of the canvas, well below the X- and Y-axis, add this text: "Source: Chicago Police Department | Chart/Mike Reilley". Please use dark blue for the bars in the chart.
Create an infographic from the information in this newsletter about data and digital security. https://journaliststoolbox.substack.com/p/nov-11-data-security-tools-part-i
NotebookLM
https://notebooklm.google/
Homicides data link to visualize
https://bit.ly/chicagohomicides24
NotebookLM Infographics and Multimedia
In this video for the 2nd edition of "Data + Journalism, Mike Reilley shows you how to use Google's NotebookLM to create infographics, mindmaps, data tables, podcasts and more. Exercise materials: https://bit.ly/datavideos2
NotebookLM
https://notebooklm.google/
Chapter 5 Analyzing a Dataset - Bridge Inspections
In this video for the 2nd edition of "Data + Journalism", Mike Reilley shows you how to scrape and analyze a dataset. Exercise materials: https://bit.ly/datavideos2
FHWA bridge inspections links
Dataset: https://bit.ly/bridgedata2023
Website: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/no10/condition23.cfm
Formula:
=IMPORTHTML("https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/no10/condition23.cfm","table",0)
Editing With LLMs and Other AI Tools
In this video, Mike Reilley shows you how to edit your stories using Large Language Models and other AI tools. Exercise materials: https://bit.ly/datavideos2
Editing tools
THSRS
http://thsrs.com/
Hemingway
https://hemingwayapp.com/
Quillbot
https://quillbot.com/
ChatGPT
https://chatgpt.com/
Gemini Pro
https://gemini.google.com/
Claude
https://claude.ai/
Prompt exercise for editing in LLMS:
Edit this text for Associated Press Style, grammar, word usage, punctuation and spelling. Please list all of the edits in a bullet-point list at the end.
Five Cook County employees defrauded the federal COVID-19 relief program of more than two-hundred and forty thousand dollars, falsely claiming they owned companies that strggled during the pandemic, the county inspector general’s office said in a report Friday
Over the past year twenty other county workers also were suspected of defrauding the federal Paycheck Protection Program, accoring to interum Inspector General Steven Cyranoski. They includ 3 high-ranking county officials, including one in the county’s human resources office, a payroll supervisor in the comptroller’s office & a director in the health department, according to Cyranoski.
In 5 quartrly reports since July 2022, Cyranoski said he & his investigators found county workers were sspected of stealing more than seven hundred thousand dollars in PPP
Scraping PDFs With and Without LLMs
In this video for the 2nd Edition of "Data + Journalism", Mike Reilley shows you how to scrape data from PDFs using traditional scraping tools as well as large language models. Exercise resources: https://bit.ly/datavideos2
PDF to Excel
https://www.pdftoexcel.com/
Tabula scraper
https://tabula.technology/
ChatGPT
https://chatgpt.com/
Folder with practice PDFs: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZPxYtAGGAsnPVavx9if5tCrGJvCNDG14
Scraping Data From Websites
In this training video for "Data + Journalism", Mike Reilley will show you how to scrape data from a website table. Scraping formulas and materials are located here: https://bit.ly/datavideos2
NIFC link
https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics/wildfires
Formula:
=IMPORTHTML("https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics/wildfires","table",0)
FHWA Bridge Inspections
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/no10/condition23.cfm
Formula:
=IMPORTHTML("https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/no10/condition23.cfm","table",0)
Using Perplexity and Other LLMs for Data Journalism Research
In this video, Mike Reilley shows you how to use Perplexity and other LLMs for developing interview questions, finding datasets and expert sources for data-driven news stories. Resources used in the video:
1. Handout link: https://bit.ly/datavideos2
2. Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/
BASE PROMPT: You are a #role in #broadtopic. I need you to formulate some questions to ask someone to get them to think about #specifictopic. The questions should not be broad. The user needs to be able to easily give a specific answer. I need them to be asked in a way that helps them understand what #specifictopic actually is. Real-life examples need to be posed in the question.
You are an investigative journalist for a national publication covering environmental issues with AI. I need you to formulate some questions to ask an expert source to get them to think about AI draining environmental resources in Oregon to cool data centers. The questions should not be broad. The user needs to be able to easily give a specific answer. I need them to be asked in a way that helps them understand what environmental issue actually is. Real-life examples need to be posed in the question.
Research prompt: You are a national digital news reporter covering the environment. What are the key factors driving the growth of offshore wind farms? Cite valid research and links to the studies. Please provide links to any relevant datasets for charts or maps. Also cite five expert sources on the topic and links to their bios and contact information.
Journalist's Toolbox: NotebookLM Pt. 3 Videos
In this video, the third in a series of NotebookLM videos, Mike Reilley shows you the new interface and video summary feature.
https://notebooklm.google/
Journalist's Toolbox: MyLens and Google Opal
In this video, Mike Reilley shows you how to use MyLens to create charts and Google Opal to create interactive quizzes.
MyLens AI
https://mylens.ai/
Google Opal
https://opal.withgoogle.com/
Journalist's Toolbox: Rolli IQ
In this video, Mike Reilley demos Rolli IQ, a new feature from Rolli. Prior to watching the video, sign up for a Rolliapp.com account (free for journalists with JOURNOAI code).
Full disclosure: Rolli advertises on JournalistsToolbox.ai
You also can watch the Rolliapp basics training video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATJuuB1qikM
Journalist's Toolbox Custom GPT and How I Built It
In this video, Mike Reilley shows you how he built the Journalist's Toolbox Custom GPT ... and how you can use it.
Toolbox Custom GPT: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6862f0407e648191809ec5dd44ec3797-journalist-s-toolbox?model=gpt-4o
List of Custom GPTs for Journalists: https://journaliststoolbox.ai/custom-gpts/
Journalist's Toolbox: Julius AI for Data Journalism
In this video, Mike Reilley shows you how to use Julius.ai for creating charts and analyzing basic datasets.
Link to the training document: https://bit.ly/juliusexercise
Set up a free account at https://julius.ai/
Download files to practice with:
Chicago homicides: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MMf_IdgrUi3y24lV0wrBTZSUcYAj8gcQQEZxo7GzMf0/edit?gid=208542768#gid=208542768
Prompt: Create a vertical bar chart using the attached data. Make the header read: Chicago Homicides by Year and in the footer underneath the chart read: Source: CPD | Chart: Mike Reilley
Central Park Squirrel Census: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KjvJ_Gkh4BXPkmy2ktBeNiJY5LJAAFEy/view?usp=sharing
Journalist's Toolbox: Data Scraping With ChatGPT
In this video, Mike Reilley shows you how to scrape data from a PDF using a prompt in ChatGPT.
Link to this handout: https://bit.ly/aiscraping25
LLM Journalism Tool Advisor: https://llmadvisor.replit.app/
Download any of these PDFs to scrape, just adjust the prompt to fit the scrape: https://bit.ly/pdfscrape
Note: PDFtoExcel.com and Tabula.technology are other options for scraping PDFs. They can be very efficient. Julius.ai can scrape data as well.
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Journalist's Toolbox: What's New to the Site in 2026