Best New Blog For DC Wonks: District Measured

• December 14th 2015

by UrbanTurf Staff

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UrbanTurf usually stays away from publishing rankings or lists…except at the end of the year when we look back at the best that DC’s residential real estate scene had to offer during the previous 12 months. So, this week we are looking at not only the best but the most intriguing and peculiar things that came across our radar over the course of 2015. Enjoy.

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DC is a city with a sizable contingent of people who love reading about the analysis of statistics and data. The city’s Office of Revenue Analysis, a division of the Office of the Chief Financial Officer responsible for revenue estimates, fiscal impact statements, and various studies on the city’s economy, launched a blog in January to feed that appetite.

District Measured is every city wonk’s dream: a publication that digests and summarizes interesting trends that relate to DC’s finances and economy. Since it launched, the blog has published posts ranging from how demographics have changed in DC neighborhoods over the last decade to the increasing cost of going to a baseball game in the city to the scant evidence of DC’s gig economy.

“We have a bunch of researchers in our office who look at trends shaping the city,” Ginger Moored, one of District Measured’s writers, told UrbanTurf. “In the past, we’ve mostly shared our work with other researchers and policymakers, but we thought DC residents would be interested in our findings as well. We want to tell stories about the city that are relevant to people who live and work here, and we want to do so without a political agenda.”

Yesim Taylor, the Director of Fiscal and Legislative Analysis at the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, says that the blog has 17 contributors, mostly from the Office of Revenue Analysis. The data sources for the articles include publicly available data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor, and the Census, as well as data released by the city on student test scores, city budgets, and property sales and assessments.

The blog publishes about 5-6 times a month, on average, and has been cited by almost every local media outlet in the city. Washingtonian magazine even asked the authors to inform them when they have big studies coming out.

“We wanted to share our research on the [city’s] economy and demographics with a broader audience, and challenge ourselves to write about these trends and present the information with a clear language,” Taylor said. “We are blessed with an audience who is deeply interested in the city, and as geeky as we are.”

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/best_new_blog_for_dc_wonks_district_measured/10669.