I'm Nicu Calcea, a data and investigative journalist with 13 years of experience in media, including data, reporting, editing and multimedia. Currently based in London.

Get in touch at mail [at] this domain

Skills
  • R
  • ggplot
  • Excel
  • Google Sheets
  • Flourish
  • Datawrapper
  • Tableau
  • Google Analytics
Select stories
Package holidays in Greece, Spain and Turkey soar in price — BBC News
Eight out of ten firms pay men more than women — BBC News
Cost of living: If no one comes we close early, says pub — BBC News
How big is occupied Ukraine? Use our interactive map to find out — New Statesman
Personal inflation calculator: how do you compare to the rest of Britain? — New Statesman
The Covid-19 pandemic made us fall in love with Christmas songs — New Statesman
Exclusive: Tory MPs would be over £1m worse off in six months with Boris Johnson's second job ban — New Statesman
Why winter is a poor argument against bike lanes — City Monitor
A lifetime of inequality: how black Britons face discrimination at every age — New Statesman
See more stories
Experience
BBC News, London — Data Journalist
OCT 2022 - NOW
I work on the Money, Work & Tech desk at BBC News, where I cover everything money-related, from breaking news on budget days to longer-term investigations into high insolvency rates. Most of my stories involve collaborating with reporters across the newsroom, but I also work on solo projects, some of which were heavily featured on various TV programmes and got up to 6m+ views on the website. I have also built and maintain an R library to easily and reliably produce business charts for online and broadcast.
City University, London — Visiting Lecturer
OCT 2021 - NOW
I teach an introductory Data Journalism class to postgraduate students.
New Statesman, London — Data Projects Editor
JUL 2021 - SEPT 2022
My team's remit expanded to include around 20 B2B websites within the media division of GlobalData, a sister company of the New Statesman. Shortly after, I was promoted to Data Projects Editor, leading a small team of dataviz developers and overseeing the production of award-winning data-led visual projects. To improve coverage on the B2B websites, I wrote an R library that produced hundreds of automated data-led articles and charts. I was also deputy head of the 15+ data journalism team at the New Statesman and GlobalData.
New Statesman, London — Data Journalist
APR 2020 - JUL 2021
I wrote data-led stories about British politics, urbanism, renewable energy, foreign direct investment, media, technology and many other topics for the New Statesman and its sister publications. I worked with other reporters (data and non-data) and developers to create high-impact stories that were picked up by bigger publications. My last big project, for example, was the second most-read article on the website for the previous year.
Other media roles, London/Chișinău
JUL 2010 - APR 2020
I started my first paid journalism job in 2010, at age 16, when I co-founded Privesc.Eu, a Moldovan media startup that broadcasted live from press conferences and other public interest events. I went on to work as a reporter for non-profit Moldova.org, eventually founding and running the commercial arm of the newsroom. After I graduated from City University, I started my first data job at dataviz agency infogr8, where I helped companies like Spotify, Billboard, Oracle and Mars present their data in the best way possible. I briefly took a fixed-term contract with property portal Zoopla, working with their data analytics team to uncover insights about homeownership and renting.
Download CV (pdf)
Education
SEP 2017 - JUNE 2019
MA in Business and Financial Journalism (London)
MA in Journalism, Media and Globalisation (Aarhus)
SEP 2012 - JUNE 2017
MA in Contemporary Philosophies (Chișinău)
Bachelor in Philosophy (Chișinău)