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Unbiased data storytelling and data journalism using public, government data - by citizens, for citizens.
About Tyche Insights
- What is a Data Story?
- What are the components of a Data Story?
- What is Tyche Insights?
- What is the purpose of Tyche Insights?
- Who contributes to Tyche Insights and why?
- What is the licensing and copyright of Tyche Insights content?
- Who reads and uses Tyche Insights content?
- What is the Tyche Insights origin story?
Search for data stories & data journalism
As we launch Tyche Insights we begin with a set of content that we have populated for Albany, New York. These are stories that analyze the City of Albany's housing, crime, population, taxes, state funding and more. To understand the types of stories that you will see over time (and potentially to give you some ideas on data stories that you can write!), search using terms such as "Albany", "Crime", "Finance" and more.
We also have the concept of a "Hub" where a group is focused on a broader storytelling effort.
Featured data story
One way to examine the utilization and value of the land use in your community is to create a Total Value Per Acre (TVPA) analysis for your town. The idea is that various areas of your city, town or county contribute to the property tax roll at different rates. See this new article on TVPA analysis for Wichita, Kansas.
Sometimes this contribution is obvious; an undeveloped one-acre parcel of land contributes less tax than a one-acre parcel of developed land. Sometimes the contributions are counterintuitive. A 2-acre property with a two million dollar home might contribute less to the property tax roll than if there were 10 0.2 acre houses on the same property.
We like this story for a number of reasons. First, it builds on Strong Towns and their championing of TVPA analysis. Secondly, we laid out a process that explains how anyone can perform similar analysis for their community.
Lastly, TVPA analysis doesn't necessarily get you to an outcome of "this area is good, this area is bad", rather it shows you how land has been built up and used, and what the impact is from an improved value perspective. We want this analysis to inform future decisions that support the next generation of housing development.
See our list of Featured Stories. We will be adding to this list over time.
Opinions and News
- The Open Data Flywheel - December 18, 2025
Join us, follow us, talk to us
Join the Tyche Insights community by clicking "Create account" at the top of this page. When you create an account you can write a data story, ask for assistance as you write your data story, comment and ask questions on existing data stories, participate in our Talk pages, receive email updates from Tyche Insights and more. Feel free to create an account even if you only want to read public data-driven stories & journalism which will help us understand the reach of our community's storytelling.
Want to talk to someone at Tyche Insights? If you're interested in writing your first story, discussing a challenge that you've had in obtaining the right data, talking about the company and its mission, or for any other reason - Click this link to schedule a 15 minute Zoom with the Tyche Insights team.
Other ways to follow and contact us? follow us on LinkedIn to receive updates and see our emails at the bottom of the page.
Data storytelling & data journalism as a Collaboration
We want to support anyone or any group of people who wants to use public data for data storytelling and journalism. If you are a solo data storyteller or a group of concerned citizens in a community, you are welcome here.
We also believe that data storytelling as a collaboration is powerful - many people from different cities and towns, analyzing similar data from their local governments, using the same tools, supporting each other.
We're excited to support our first group data storytelling project - the Hudson Finance Decoder Project. The purpose of this project is "Citizens working together to analyze the financial health of their cities, towns and counties across the USA and Canada." We will support anyone, anywhere who wants to create a Strong Towns Finance Decoder for their community, and then to turn that Finance Deocoder into a data story, like we did for Albany, NY.
And we are creating a queue of future data storytelling collaborations. Helping anyone, anywhere analyze your community's crime and budgets are at the top of the queue.
Interested in Contributing?
What does data storytelling look like? What is the process? Walk through the process here.
As your read and contribut to Tyche Insights, please abide by our Code of Conduct.
Acquiring and understanding Public Data
What is public data? What types of public data exist that you might use? How do you acquire public data?
We provide a number of answers to these questions here.
Asking questions and Talk Pages
Want to ask questions, share ideas, discuss policy and approaches? We have set up Talk pages for all of these. Each of these are a subject-specific discussion forum. See our Talk Pages overview.
Data news story conventions
We are developing a set of conventions that guide the data storytelling process and articles. We have created a set of initial documents and will be expanding this based on the community's feedback and guidance.
Data news story how-to
You may already know how to analyze data using many different tools and methods, or you may need some hints or even complete recipes for how you perform certain analysis. We are creating various how-to documents and will be expanding this list. Access our document with links to various how-to documents.
Any Other Questions?
You can reach out to us via email.
- General questions about joining? JoinUs@TycheInsights.com
- Co-founder Karl Urich (KarlTyche) - karl@tycheinsights.com
- Co-founder Keith Gargiulo (KeithTyche) - keith@tycheinsights.com