What Is Data Journalism, and Why Does It Matter for Westmoreland County?

Every week, your local government makes decisions that affect your property taxes, your kids' schools, and the roads you drive on. Those decisions live in public records: budgets, meeting minutes, police reports, property transfers, zoning changes. The problem? Most of that information is buried in PDFs, scattered across dozens of municipal websites, or locked behind paywalls.

Data journalism changes that.

The Short Version

Data journalism is reporting that starts with records and numbers instead of press releases and quotes. It means collecting public data, analyzing it for patterns, and turning what we find into stories that actually help you understand what's happening in your community.

Think of it this way: a traditional news story might tell you that the county approved a new budget. A data journalism story shows you exactly where every dollar is going, how spending has changed over the past five years, and which line items grew the fastest. One tells you what happened. The other shows you what it means.

Why It Matters Here

Westmoreland County has 65 municipalities, 17 school districts, and a population of roughly 350,000 people. Each of those municipalities holds regular council meetings, passes ordinances, and manages budgets funded by your tax dollars. Each school district sets millage rates, negotiates contracts, and makes decisions about your children's education.

That's a lot of public information. And for the most part, nobody is tracking it in a way that makes it easy for residents to access and understand.

The Tribune-Review covers some of it. But much of their reporting sits behind a paywall, and their coverage can't realistically extend to every borough council meeting or every school board vote across the county. Community Facebook groups try to fill the gap, but unverified posts and heated comment sections aren't a substitute for verified public records.

This is exactly the kind of gap data journalism was built to fill.

What We've Already Built

This isn't hypothetical. The Greensburg Times is already using data journalism to build tools and resources for Westmoreland County residents. Here's what's live on the site right now:

An interactive county map. Using official GeoJSON boundary data from the state of Pennsylvania, we built an interactive map of all 65 municipalities in Westmoreland County. You can click any borough, township, or the City of Greensburg to see its boundaries, and we're adding layers over time, including school district boundaries, voting precincts, and legislative districts. The data comes from the Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access portal and is completely free and public.

A complete government directory. We researched and compiled every elected official serving Westmoreland County, from the three county commissioners and all ten row office holders to the full Court of Common Pleas bench, all 16 magisterial district judges, state legislators, and federal representatives. This required pulling data from the county website, court records, the PA legislature, and election results from November 2025, then organizing it all in one searchable, free resource. No other local source has this information in a single place.

A fish fry map. It sounds simple, but this is data journalism in action. We geocoded every fish fry location in the county, combining listings from the Diocese of Greensburg, fire department Facebook pages, VFW posts, and restaurant menus into a single interactive map layer with filters by type, dining options, and schedule. During Lent, this is one of the most searched topics in Western Pennsylvania, and the information was previously scattered across dozens of disconnected sources.

Real-time weather from the National Weather Service. Instead of embedding a generic widget, we pull data directly from the NWS API, the same source used by every official forecast in the country. That gives our readers detailed text forecasts written by actual meteorologists at the Pittsburgh office, active weather alerts for Westmoreland County, and hourly conditions, all without a paywall or a third-party middleman.

An events calendar with iCal feeds. Community feedback consistently told us that finding local events was one of the biggest frustrations in the county. We built a calendar system organized into 12 categories with full iCal support, meaning anyone can subscribe to a feed and have Westmoreland County events show up automatically in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook. The goal is to be the single reliable source for what's happening in the county, without requiring people to scroll through Facebook groups.

School board pages for all 17 districts. We're building out individual pages for every school district in the county with board members, meeting schedules, budget information from the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and links to BoardDocs and meeting recordings. Parents can see how their district's spending compares to others across the county, all from official state data.

How AI Fits In

One of the biggest barriers to data journalism has always been cost. Major newsrooms like ProPublica and the Texas Tribune employ entire teams of data reporters, developers, and designers. That's not realistic for a hyperlocal operation covering a single county.

But the tools have caught up. Artificial intelligence can now assist with the most time-consuming parts of the process: extracting structured data from messy PDFs, summarizing lengthy meeting minutes, and flagging unusual patterns in large datasets. What used to take a team of five can now be managed by a much smaller operation with the right technical skills and editorial oversight.

That's the model behind the Greensburg Times. We use automation to handle the heavy lifting of data collection and processing, then apply human judgment to verify accuracy, add context, and decide what matters most to our readers.

It's not replacing journalism. It's making real journalism possible at the local level again.

The Bigger Picture

Across the country, local newspapers are disappearing at a rate of roughly two per week. Northwestern University's Medill Local News Initiative reports that 213 counties in the United States now qualify as news deserts, with little to no access to local journalism. The consequences are well documented: lower voter turnout, higher government borrowing costs, increased corruption, and communities that lose the shared information infrastructure they need to function.

At the same time, digital-only local news sites are growing. Many of them are built on the same principles that drive the Greensburg Times: use technology to lower the cost of accountability journalism, focus on public records and government transparency, and deliver information without the paywalls and clutter that have driven readers away from traditional outlets.

Data journalism isn't a trend or a buzzword. It's a practical response to a real problem. When the information that affects your daily life is public but not accessible, someone needs to bridge that gap. That's what we're here to do.

What's Coming Next

The foundation is in place. Next up: police blotters pulled directly from public records, high school sports scoreboards covering all 17 county schools, property transfer tracking, business directories tied to the interactive map, and precinct-level election coverage for the 2026 cycle. Every feature follows the same approach: find the public data, make it accessible, and present it without the noise.

No paywall. No national news. No opinion columns. Just verified local information, presented clearly, for the community that needs it.

If there's a public record or dataset you think we should be tracking, we want to hear about it. The best data journalism starts with the questions residents are already asking.

The Greensburg Times is an independent, AI-assisted local news source covering Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Visit us at greensburgtimes.com or follow @greensburgtimes on social media.