Coronavirus reporting is profoundly driven by numbers. Tests administered, cases diagnosed, deaths attributed; doubling speed, growth curves, R 0 ; county data, state data, national data.

It’s a lot. And as efforts to collect and organize this data — released under different standards and methods from jurisdiction to jurisdiction — have shown, the numbers don’t always say what you think they say.

And some reporters not used to doing this much math might want the help of someone more experienced — someone who can provide guidance and give that spreadsheet a second look.

That’s the idea behind Peer Data Review from OpenNews. The program “connects people in local newsrooms with fellow journalists who can help them think through a data story.” And now, after a run as a pilot project last fall, it’s open specifically to reporters doing work on COVID-19.

Learning data journalism is a continual process, and as a community, we invest a lot of time and energy into sharing what we know through trainings, workshops, and writeups. Support from a peer makes it easier to implement what you’ve learned. When you aren’t sure the data really says what you think, or you feel anxious about making a math mistake, walking through your process with someone else can help. Reporters on smaller teams don’t always have experienced colleagues to compare notes with — but that’s a gap the news-nerd community can help fill.

This isn’t for people still looking for data to crunch; it’s “for stories and projects where you already have the data and: aren’t sure it says what you think it says, don’t have a colleague to double-check your analysis, or just aren’t quite sure what to do next.”

In last fall’s pilot, one of OpenNews’ key findings was that “journalists in smaller newsrooms face a support gap, not a skills gap” — that the comfort of having an experienced data reporter to call on when your SQL’s gone squirrely encourages reporters to start data stories in the first place.

Interested? You can find out more here and sign up here. (And don’t worry: They won’t steal your brilliant story idea.)

The program is funded via a Magic Grant from the Brown Institute. (Think grant programs have to take a long time? Brown announced this cycle of $5,000 grants for COVID-19 projects on March 14; more than 300 applications were in a week later; five, including Peer Data Review, were awarded the grants on March 24. Agile!)

The other four winning projects: