Dana Chinn focuses on data journalism and media analytics strategy.

In addition to teaching USC Annenberg’s data journalism courses, she is researching the role of journalism in establishing the policies and standards needed to make government datasets more accurate, accessible and usable to the public. Her research explores the state of open data in Los Angeles County, and challenges government to think critically about how they measure open-data success.

She led several grant-funded media-metrics research projects and her role as director of the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center Media Impact Project. Believing that traditional mass media audience metrics are hampering the news industry’s potential to survive, she partnered with news organizations to apply best practices in e-commerce metrics to media. Together with Professor Mike Lee at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and top e-commerce metrics vendors, she conceptualized and designed a media metrics data repository to gather and analyze large datasets of media audience behavior across platforms.

She is also the faculty adviser for the USC student chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association.

Previously at USC Annenberg, she directed the Convergence Core Curriculum, the first iteration of USC Annenberg’s current multiplatform curriculum. She also directed extracurricular interdisciplinary programs such as the Mobile News Incubator, which brought together journalism, engineering and business faculty and students. She enjoys introducing students to the world of data, and is proud to have mentored USC Annenberg’s first Google News Lab Fellows, a highly competitive program in data-driven journalism.

Her professional experience includes management and consulting positions in online planning and operations, strategic planning, marketing and finance at Gannett, the Los Angeles Times and Media Insight Group. She has an undergraduate degree in journalism and an MBA from USC.