Anthony DeBarros

I was born into a Portuguese-Italian family just north of New York City and found a love for books, music, and writing early in life. Only later did I find an aptitude for computing and working with data. I’m glad I did—writing code, counting things, and telling stories about what turned up has become both a career and a lot of fun.

For more than two decades, I’ve been a “data journalist,” combing through spreadsheets, building data pipelines, scraping websites and sorting numbers to find news in data. For the past six years, I’ve worked at The Wall Street Journal, where I collaborate with reporters covering elections, money in politics, the economy and demographics.

My book, Practical SQL: A Beginner’s Guide to Storytelling with Data, teaches basic-to-advanced SQL plus data analysis techniques I’ve learned—sometimes the hard way. Thanks to my publisher, No Starch Press, we’re on a second edition with translations in Korean, traditional Chinese and Polish.

In the past:

I’ve been a team leader, product manager and/or data journalist for USA Today, Questex, the Poughkeepsie Journal, and DocumentCloud. I also flipped burgers at McDonald's and did a stint as a DJ on a rock music station.

My work has received honors including a Silver Baton from the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards.

If you'd like to get in touch, please see the Get Help page on my book website.

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