I'm a journalist who

I’m a senior data and graphics editor at CNN in Los Angeles. My work combines reporting, Python development, visual storytelling and newsroom automation. I help turn difficult data into clear stories.

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Selected work

Projects

Latest

Airspace

Tracks live aircraft near a specified location on a radar-style map, identifying police, fire and news helicopters and tagging the ones circling, hovering or flying low.

  • Data extraction
  • Mapping
  • Analysis
  • Aviation

Built with Python, Svelte, Mapbox GL

GitHub

Airspace

Replay of an overnight recording over West LA, sped up: an LAPD helicopter works down the coast from Santa Monica and swings into a turn over Marina del Rey while jets come and go at LAX.

Things at CNN

Matt Stiles's CNN profile page showing a list of recent visual stories
View project

CNN visuals and data stories

Data viz, Analysis, Journalism

Things other people use

The ezesri web app, with a field for pasting an Esri REST layer URL
View project

ezesri

Data extraction, Government data
Street View panorama of the Sixth Street Viaduct in Los Angeles
View project

streetview-dl

Data extraction
County-level choropleth map of farmland as a share of county land area, densest across the Plains
View project

chorokit

Data viz, Mapping
A pyfr24 plot tracing a single flight path
View project

pyfr24

Data extraction, Mapping, Aviation
Map tracing five United Airlines flight paths across the United States
View project

flight-tracer

Data extraction, Mapping, Aviation
Terminal output from a hangarbay registry lookup, listing the owner, model and airworthiness dates for an LAPD helicopter
View project

hangarbay

Data extraction, Analysis, Aviation
The mound.cli brand card, reading
View project

Mound

Data extraction, Analysis, Data viz, Baseball
Dot density map of the United States showing thousands of retail locations
View project

Locations

Data extraction, Mapping, Retail
An LA Street Names Jupyter notebook, with its summary cell above Python import and pandas display settings
View project

notebooks

Reference, Analysis

Things that run themselves

The DodgersData.bot dashboard, showing a run differential chart and the season record
View project

DodgersData.bot

Data viz, Analysis, Baseball
A screenshot of the Trump Truth Social archive, showing a post and its engagement metrics.
View project

Trump Truth Social archive

Data extraction, Politics Now maintained by CNN
An LAPD helicopter over the Los Angeles skyline
View project

LAPD choppers

Mapping, Analysis, Los Angeles
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is seated in a room with other North Korean leaders, according to KCNA.
View project

North Korea trackers

Data extraction, Foreign affairs
The Chartfeed gallery, with a search box and category filters above a dark grid of chart thumbnails
View project

chartfeed

Data viz
A screenshot of an object from the database's contestant table showing the first US winner, Richard Hatch.
View project

survivoR2py

Data extraction, Television

Things to click on

Onion History homepage with options to browse a random headline or a date
View project

Onion History

Reference, Data extraction, Satire
View project

Feels Like LA

Data viz, weather, Los Angeles
Map of central Los Angeles with purple dots marking jacaranda trees
View project

Jacaranda Map

Mapping, Los Angeles
Calendar heat map of US birth frequency for every day of the year
View project

Birthday Rank

Data viz, Demographics
LA Speed Cameras site showing a map of camera locations across Los Angeles
View project

LA Speed Cameras

Mapping, Reference, Los Angeles
The What's My LA home page, with an address search field
View project

Whats My LA

Mapping, Los Angeles
About

Background

I'm Matt Stiles, a senior data and graphics editor at CNN, where I build software, manage technical staff and guide visual coverage.

I've expanded our team's automation from a few weather pipelines to 100 data pipelines, building or leading their development across business, climate, health and White House coverage. I also conceived and built Bot Index, an internal catalog that helps reporters and editors find existing live charts, maps and trackers on deadline.

Outside the newsroom, I publish open-source Python tools for acquiring and analyzing data, from government GIS records to flight paths and baseball pitches. I also occasionally teach data journalism at the University of Southern California.

Previously, I worked as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, served as data editor at NPR and was the founding news applications editor at The Texas Tribune. Read my résumé, stories and graphics.

Hello

Let's talk

Interested in data tools, visual storytelling or leading the teams behind them? Get in touch.

Matt Stiles's CNN profile page showing a list of recent visual stories

CNN visuals and data stories

A running collection of my data-driven stories, graphics and news applications at CNN.

  • Data viz
  • Analysis
  • Journalism

Visit site

Bot Index dashboard showing searchable cards for automated CNN data pipelines

Internal CNN tool

Bot Index

I conceived and built a searchable internal catalog connecting 100 newsroom data pipelines with 120 live charts and 37 trackers. Its inventory updates automatically each day.

  • Reference
  • Newsroom tools
CNN Visuals Cronbot repository README describing its automated data pipelines

Internal CNN system

CNN Visuals Cronbot

I own a collection of around 100 automated scripts that fetch and process data for CNN Visuals. They run on schedules in GitHub Actions, publish processed data to S3 and send status notifications to Slack.

  • Data extraction
  • Newsroom tools

Built with Python, GitHub Actions, AWS S3, Slack
The ezesri web app, with a field for pasting an Esri REST layer URL

ezesri

pip install ezesri

Pulls data and metadata out of Esri REST endpoints — the format most government GIS portals publish in — and writes it to GeoJSON, Shapefile, GeoPackage or GeoParquet.

  • Data extraction
  • Government data

Built with Python, CLI, GeoPandas

Visit site GitHub Write-up

Street View panorama of the Sixth Street Viaduct in Los Angeles

streetview-dl

pip install streetview-dl

Finds and downloads full-resolution Google Street View panoramas from a URL or a pair of coordinates, including historical captures of the same spot.

  • Data extraction

Built with Python, CLI

GitHub Write-up

County-level choropleth map of farmland as a share of county land area, densest across the Plains

chorokit

pip install chorokit

Makes a clean choropleth in a few lines, with defaults for projection, layout and legend chosen so the map is publishable on the first render.

  • Data viz
  • Mapping

Built with Python, matplotlib, GeoPandas

GitHub

A pyfr24 plot tracing a single flight path

pyfr24

pip install pyfr24

A Python client and command-line tool for the Flightradar24 API. Start with a flight number, end with a plotted track and a table you can analyze.

  • Data extraction
  • Mapping
  • Aviation

Built with Python, CLI, matplotlib

Visit site GitHub Write-up

Map tracing five United Airlines flight paths across the United States

flight-tracer

pip install flight-tracer

Fetches, stores and maps aircraft positions from ADS-B Exchange, built for following one tail number over weeks rather than watching a single flight.

  • Data extraction
  • Mapping
  • Aviation

Built with Python

GitHub

Terminal output from a hangarbay registry lookup, listing the owner, model and airworthiness dates for an LAPD helicopter

hangarbay

pip install hangarbay

A reproducible workflow for the FAA aircraft registry: download the raw files, normalize them into typed tables and find out who owns a tail number.

  • Data extraction
  • Analysis
  • Aviation

Built with Python, CLI

GitHub

The mound.cli brand card, reading

Mound

pip install mound

Turns a player's name into MLB pitch-level tables and charts, from the command line or a few lines of Python. No IDs needed.

  • Data extraction
  • Analysis
  • Data viz
  • Baseball

Built with Python, CLI, matplotlib

Visit site GitHub Write-up

Dot density map of the United States showing thousands of retail locations

Locations

Scrapers that gather store and restaurant locations for major US chains, so you can map a company's footprint without asking the company for its data.

  • Data extraction
  • Mapping
  • Retail

Built with Python, GeoPandas

GitHub

An LA Street Names Jupyter notebook, with its summary cell above Python import and pandas display settings

notebooks

Hundreds of worked Jupyter notebooks for analysis, charts and maps in Python. This is the reference I actually send people who ask how to start.

  • Reference
  • Analysis

Built with Python, Jupyter, pandas

GitHub

The DodgersData.bot dashboard, showing a run differential chart and the season record

DodgersData.bot

An automated pipeline that tracks Dodgers standings and game-by-game performance against every season back to 1958, and publishes the whole thing to a live dashboard each morning.

  • Data viz
  • Analysis
  • Baseball

Built with Python, pandas, D3

Visit site GitHub

A screenshot of the Trump Truth Social archive, showing a post and its engagement metrics.

Now maintained by CNN

Trump Truth Social archive

An auto-updating archive of President Trump's Truth Social posts, built when there was no reliable public record of them.

  • Data extraction
  • Politics

Built with Python

GitHub

An LAPD helicopter over the Los Angeles skyline

LAPD choppers

Tracks LAPD helicopter flights and maps how often they fly over each division, reporting district and neighborhood.

  • Mapping
  • Analysis
  • Los Angeles

Built with Python, GeoPandas

GitHub

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is seated in a room with other North Korean leaders, according to KCNA.

North Korea trackers

One pipeline archives hundreds of North Korean provocations, from missile launches to nuclear tests; the other scrapes state media headlines as they publish.

  • Data extraction
  • Foreign affairs

Built with Python

GitHub

The Chartfeed gallery, with a search box and category filters above a dark grid of chart thumbnails

chartfeed

A responsive gallery of your Datawrapper charts that rebuilds itself every day through GitHub Actions.

  • Data viz

Built with Svelte, GitHub Actions

GitHub

A screenshot of an object from the database's contestant table showing the first US winner, Richard Hatch.

survivoR2py

Converts an R-only archive of every Survivor castaway, challenge and vote into CSV and JSON on a daily schedule, so the show's full record is usable without knowing R.

  • Data extraction
  • Television

Built with Python, GitHub Actions

GitHub

Onion History homepage with options to browse a random headline or a date

Onion History

An automated archive of more than 35,000 headlines from The Onion, including "Supreme Court Votes 5-4 To Take Child Bride."

  • Reference
  • Data extraction
  • Satire

Visit site

Feels Like LA

Hourly "feels like" temperatures for every neighborhood in Los Angeles, updated automatically.

  • Data viz
  • weather
  • Los Angeles

Built with Python, TypeScript, Mapbox GL

Visit site

Map of central Los Angeles with purple dots marking jacaranda trees

Jacaranda Map

Maps LA's jacarandas, drawn from more than 1.6 million street trees I gathered from dozens of agencies in 40-plus Los Angeles-area cities.

  • Mapping
  • Los Angeles

Built with Mapbox GL, Python

Visit site GitHub

Calendar heat map of US birth frequency for every day of the year

Birthday Rank

Ranks every day of the year by how many Americans are born on it. September is crowded; Christmas and New Year's are nearly empty.

  • Data viz
  • Demographics

Built with Svelte, D3

Visit site GitHub

LA Speed Cameras site showing a map of camera locations across Los Angeles

LA Speed Cameras

Maps all 246 of LA's new automated speed cameras, searchable by neighborhood, street or commute ahead of their Oct. 26 activation.

  • Mapping
  • Reference
  • Los Angeles

Visit site

The What's My LA home page, with an address search field

Whats My LA

Type an address and see which Los Angeles you actually live in — neighborhood, council district, school zone and the rest of the overlapping boundaries.

  • Mapping
  • Los Angeles

Built with Svelte, Mapbox GL

Visit site GitHub