Ben Butcher

Ben is a collaborative force in the Telegraph newsroom. He believes deeply that data should be at the heart of the daily news cycle and is relentless in his mission to personalise news for the Telegraph's readers. As a result his presence - and byline - reaches every desk in the newsroom, from health to politics, features to personal finance.

Ben’s particular focus on home affairs journalism has highlighted the astonishing degree to which policing, immigration and education systems are collapsing across the UK, converting complex datasets into countless digestible headlines.

Just one example of this includes Ben’s exclusive, front-page investigation into burglaries across England and Wales*. He cleaned and interrogated millions of rows of individual crime reports using his programming skills to create the simple, and troubling, top-line: “Police solve no burglaries in half of the country.” The investigation took the hundreds of thousands of burglaries, geolocated them into recognisable geographies and cross referenced them with detection figures. This also presented the opportunity for a digital-first, personalised lookup tool for readers, allowing them to enter their postcode to see the severity of the problem in their area.

Ben also understands the authority data journalism can have in explaining the news beyond the headlines - something that has been important in a year of election spin. One example saw Ben use polling and historical election data to look behind the slogans such as “a vote for Reform is a vote for Labour”**. By using the latest, constituency-level and national polling, Ben was able to give an estimate on just how many places this mantra applied to and - once again - presented the data in an easy-to-use, personalised tool.

Finally, Ben has spearheaded the drive towards increased use of education data across the Telegraph, working with various teams to create the most in-depth league tables, catered to the Telegraph audience. Ben’s “Value for money” private school league table** epitomises this effort, collecting thousands of school’s fees and results and combining them for the first value for money ranking. The data collected was used for a number of spin-off stories, but this entry alone highlights the impact a new dataset combined with a personalised, audience-driven product can create.

This article, along with other school league tables, has generated thousands of subscriptions for the Telegraph. He consistently overindexes on internal engagement metrics (comments, comments per article, dwell time) proving that he is closely connected to the Telegraph readers. *Data journalism at the Telegraph is very collaborative and often combines section editor’s expertise with the team’s data skills. By-line convention gives section editors lead by-line. All data analysis which makes up the story is Ben’s, whilst quotes from contacts and context are Charles Hymas. **Connor and Mariana are visual journalists who deliver the presentation and interactivity of these projects. Ben has sole responsibility for the writing, data and editorial lines in these pieces. A screen recording of these articles is provided in supporting documents.