Cast your mind back to the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the world seemed to have a single shared obsession - the “R number”. This simple metric, which measured the reproductive rate of the virus, gave a tangible sense of the invisible threat that lurked around us. Was it above one, meaning that the virus was spreading exponentially? Or had lockdowns and other public health measures successfully brought it below that threshold? The R number became a predictor of the public mood li...| datajournalism.com
Women in action On a sunny afternoon in March, a group of elderly Swiss activists walked out of a courthouse in Strasbourg to a round of applause and chants of “bravo.” Supporters blew bubbles and rang cowbells to celebrate their landmark climate case. “They treated us like heroines,” said Elisabeth Stern, 75, who was part of the delegation representing the 2,400-strong Senior Women for Climate Change Protection, supported by Greenpeace Switzerland. Theirs is the first climate case ev...| datajournalism.com
Data has become a springboard for journalists on the frontlines of the climate refugee crisis. It points them to weather emergencies in hot zones like South Asia and Central America and to humans facing misery and despair. Jorge A., a Guatemalan farmer lost his corn crop to floods. He planted okra, but a drought killed it off. He feared if he didn’t get his family out, they, too, might die. Jorge’s story was told in gripping detail in a data-driven investigation by ProPublica in partnersh...| datajournalism.com
A core tenet of journalism is to provide truthful, factual information in order to hold those in power to account. Data journalism is no different, though its practitioners may use a different set of tools to collect, investigate, and express that information. In addition to typically written stories, data journalists have a wide range of demonstrative forms at their disposal, including static visualisations, interactive apps, and data tables. Though each of these additional storytelling form...| datajournalism.com
In the past four years, officers in Bakersfield, California have broken 31 bones. In every one of those cases, the officers involved received no discipline. This startling finding was only uncovered because of an unprecedented cross-domain collaboration to make police records transparent. In Washington, D.C., The Washington Post partnered with the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley, publishing The Unseen Toll of Nonfatal Police Shootings and building on i...| datajournalism.com
In the summer of 2021, the Documenting COVID-19 project published an article with The Kansas City Star about an elected coroner in Macon County, Missouri, who told us he routinely went against CDC guidance and wrote down causes of death that excluded COVID-19 if it “pleases the family.” The story went viral, and was picked up by multiple national outlets. After the story was published, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health reached out to our team to say that he had ...| datajournalism.com
As long as I've been in this industry, I've heard election night described as the peak "news nerd holiday." An election is also a huge economic event, a spike of reader attention and intense search traffic that's addictive. That makes it hard for newsrooms to think clearly about what an election means, much less make decisions that might reduce the flow of pageviews. But in the wake of the Trump era and the January 6, 2021 insurrection, it's time for us to step back and take a clear-eyed look...| datajournalism.com
Usually, journalists conduct data analysis to provide evidence to their audiences. Whether it’s a connection between lobbying and policy or an inequity in health or education, data will help tell the story. On the radio, presenting data analysis and having it come across as evidence by listeners can be challenging. Those of us who write for the radio know that listeners can be less than fully attentive. They’re driving, they’re washing the dishes, or, they’re listening part of the tim...| datajournalism.com
Data journalists get their ideas in a range of ways — from questions and tip-offs to news events and data releases. But if you’re new to the field you can often struggle to come up with inspiration. If you’re looking for data journalism ideas, then here’s a guide to different ways to generate them — and the types of stories they might produce. 1. Ideas come from new data releases 2. A news event is the spark for an idea 3. An example provides a template for an idea 4. A question ins...| datajournalism.com
When ProPublica and National Public Radio partnered for the series “Lost Mothers,” they discovered an alarming trend: The United States had the highest rate of women who die during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum in the developed world despite spending more on healthcare than any other country. As reporters dug deeper into the data, a vital element was missing. Where were the mothers? “When a pregnant woman or a new mother dies in the U.S., we discovered she is almost invisible. He...| datajournalism.com
Oodles. Troves. Tsunamis. With data increasingly stored in extraordinary volume, investigative journalists can and have been piloting extraordinary analysis techniques to make sense of these enormous datasets--and, in doing so, hold corporations and governments accountable. They’ve been doing this with machine learning, which is a subset of artificial intelligence that deepens data-driven reporting. It’s a technique that’s not just useful in an age of big data--but a must. The unwritten...| datajournalism.com
In 2011, The New York Times announced the arrival of drone journalism. Newsrooms were beginning to use drones to help journalists safely report on events that were difficult to attend—protests and environmental disasters. The mood was bright: drones were hip. As communication scholars Lisa Parks and Caren Kaplan write, the news media had a nearly insatiable appetite for drones—celebrating the novelty of unmanned aircraft flying inside volcanoes alongside panic about drones invading domest...| datajournalism.com
Let’s face it: you’d rather write a feature than a formula, but when duty calls -- when you need to go one-on-one with a dataset that just might have something important to say to you –- it’s time to break out that spreadsheet, stoke your latte, and hope that you’ve caught the numbers in a seriously good mood. But if not, help is available: Microsoft 365's Excel dynamic array functions and their radically new and powerful take on formulas will help put you and the data on speaking t...| datajournalism.com
Our next Conversations with Data podcast will take place on Tuesday 6 July at 3 pm CEST / 9 am ET with Eva Constantaras from Internews and Anastasia Valeeva from the American University of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan. During our live Q&A, they'll discuss the power of building a hypothesis for data journalism and what can be done to address inequity with data. The conversation will be our second live event on our Discord Server. Share your questions with us live and be part of our Conversations w...| datajournalism.com
Cybersecurity and digital privacy are major concerns for today’s journalists. As more journalists work remotely, the amount of time we spend online continues to grow. With online threats becoming more prevalent and sophisticated, we must understand how our data might be compromised and what to do to protect it. This is especially the case for investigative journalists who face more significant digital security threats given the sensitive information they handle. But the digital footprints w...| datajournalism.com
Orientations to Wikipedia often begin with its enormity. And it is enormous. The encyclopedia will be 20 years old in January 2021 and has more than 53 million articles in 314 languages. Six million are in English. According to Alexa.com, Wikipedia is the 8th most-visited web domain in the United States, and the 13th globally; it’s the only non-profit in the top-100 domains. In November 2020, more than 1.7 billion unique devices from around the world accessed Wikipedia articles. Average mon...| datajournalism.com
The FinCEN Files reveals the role of global banks in industrial-scale money laundering – and the bloodshed and suffering that flow in its wake. Drawing on a cache of secret financial intelligence reports, the global investigation reveals how banks’ profit motives overwhelm their legal obligations to stop dirty money — and how a broken U.S.-led enforcement system perpetuates business as usual. A data analysis by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found banks routin...| datajournalism.com
Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the U.S. presidential election four years ago was a catastrophic blow to the reliability of opinion polls. As November 3 approaches, journalists – and the public – ponder a crucial question: “Can the polls be trusted this time?” A Washington Post headline pinpointed why so many voters are feeling a sense of dread: “Biden leads Trump. So did Hillary Clinton. For Democrats, it’s a worrisome campaign déjà vu.” While national polling shows Bide...| datajournalism.com
Harvard University researcher Brian Friedberg operates like a detective, snooping in the dark recesses of the Internet. His main target is the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon, a shadowy movement described in a recent CNN report as “dangerous and growing.” Q has surfaced as a factor in congressional races and news coverage in the 2020 presidential election. “We are Q” posters and T-shirts have appeared at President Donald Trump’s rallies, sending up red flags. Operatives function a...| datajournalism.com
Like millions of Americans, Alex Smith watched protesters take to the streets after the brutal killing of George Floyd, a Black man, while in Minneapolis police custody. As he skimmed social media in search of information, a Twitter thread caught his eye. A BuzzFeed journalist tweeted that protests against police brutality reached beyond major hubs like Chicago and New York City into America’s smallest towns and rural areas. Smith, a data analyst from Tucson, Arizona, was stunned. “I reme...| datajournalism.com
The team of ProPublica reporters faced a daunting task. Using a database obtained from the county medical examiner’s office, they began tracking the first 100 recorded coronavirus deaths in Chicago, America’s third-largest city. What they uncovered was stunning. Seventy of the first 100 COVID-19 victims were black, reflecting a broad racial disparity in the early toll of the virus. African Americans make up only 30% of the city's population. The reporters divided up the cases and set out ...| datajournalism.com
If money makes the world go round, business journalists communicate and explain the dizzying spins that affect everyone. Their reporting underpins almost every part of society. There's no shortage of stories about how multinationals make their billions, not-for-profits fund activities, or people invest their money. What journalists add is the critical bridge between complex issues and how people understand the impacts on their lives. Business reporters who cast these stories in understandable...| datajournalism.com
While many journalists around the world report the daily global death toll and infection rates of COVID-19, audiences are seeking other stories that have a more personal and local impact on their lives. How can journalists use data to tell wider stories about the coronavirus’ impact? From the economy and relationships to mental health, press freedom and privacy, it’s hard to imagine a part of society that hasn’t been hit by the crisis. In this piece, journalists will learn how to use em...| datajournalism.com
Drink less coffee to be healthier, suggested a recent article on MSN, citing the fact that coffee can increase anxiety. Two days later, a story on Yahoo recommended the exact opposite. People should drink more coffee, it said, because the beverage may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Similarly, it’s been reported that chocolate can improve sleep and prevent depression, but also may lead to an earlier death. A glass of red wine can help you live longer, according t...| datajournalism.com
Reporters give me a sceptical look when I tell them that it is possible to apply data analysis to stories that don’t require months of their time. Too many reporters and editors equate data journalism with big, investigative projects, which is not surprising since that is where the field is most prominent and gets used the most. But there are huge benefits to be gained from applying a little data to those quicker-turnaround stories, too, and it can be done on almost any beat or topic area w...| datajournalism.com
Visualising data is like solving a jigsaw puzzle. To be successful, there are some things you should know in advance -- the scene to be revealed by the pieces is the story you'd like the data graphic to convey. You also need to understand what you have at your disposal -- the pieces of the jigsaw are the set of data in front of you. And then it’s your job to piece together the puzzle, or assemble the elements of your graphic, to tell your data’s story. Visualising data is a choice. Instea...| datajournalism.com
Some of the best examples of data journalism are big investigations, where you spend months understanding a complex issue, discovering data where there was none or diving into huge amounts of information to find something invisible to the naked eye. Bringing new light to an issue. But to understand the complexity of this data you need time, resources, and a lot of digging. By the end of that odyssey, you no longer consult experts, you are the expert. And it is a waste to not take advantage of...| datajournalism.com
A group of journalism educators from around the world, all passionate about data journalism, gathered in a sunny classroom of Paris’ Dauphine University, keen to find a way forward. Less than half an hour in there was a clear divide, almost becoming tense, between two schools of thought. The first was the argument that we need to start teaching students about coding, and that the failure to do so is irresponsible. The dismayed other side lamented that their students lacked ability, confiden...| datajournalism.com
The only path to becoming a successful data journalist is to commit oneself to a lifestyle of continuous self-learning. This is simply the price of admission to specialise in this ever-evolving field of journalism. At every turn, we are confronted with steep learning curves that require us to decide where we will invest our limited time and mental energy. These decisions are often made on the basis of the journalist’s perceived return on investment: Python or R (and then which libraries?) J...| datajournalism.com
The author Michael Lewis writes in The Undoing Project, his best-selling biography of Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, that “knowledge is prediction”. When we assert that something is true, Michael Lewis argues, we are drawing on the evidence we’ve stored in our brains to anticipate the reality of a fact, event, or situation. We combine that evidence to predict (with varying degrees of certainty) that a particular phenomenon can or cannot be. To know something is to ...| datajournalism.com
The best ‘data stories’ are not obvious. They don’t hit the reader over the head with numbers, at least not initially. But the data is the very foundation on which the story is built, and it can help guide reporters to the best anecdotes or ways to illustrate their findings. Good data editing requires an understanding of all that, along with critical thinking, project management skills, and a better-than-average understanding of the content, context, and organisation of the data. Just a...| datajournalism.com
In the pursuit of a story, journalists are often required to protect the identity of their source. Many of the most impactful works of journalism have relied upon such an arrangement, yet the balancing act between publishing information that is vital to a story and protecting the person behind that information can present untold challenges, especially when the personal safety of the source is at risk. These challenges are particularly heightened in this age of omnipresent data collection. Adv...| datajournalism.com
305, 8200, 922. At first sight, these numbers appear meaningless. But if we convert them to kilometres per hour, depth in metres, and barometric pressure, they represent the start of three major natural disasters. The speed of winds when Typhoon Haiyan hit the Filipino province of Eastern Samar. The depth of Nepal’s April 2015 Earthquake. And the intensity of Hurricane Andrew, when it made landfall in Florida 23 years prior. Looking at these numbers another way, they also represent the most...| datajournalism.com
It is generally believed by the layman, the expert, and the journalist that numbers are hard and judgements are soft. It means that when we see a number, or a statistic, we think of it as objective, accurate, and incontestable. However, when we hear that someone consider, believes, or has an opinion our sceptical mind awakens. But often numbers are far softer than we commonly assume. Basic metrics such as inflation, or debt as a share of GDP, have been shown to change radically after revision...| datajournalism.com
It doesn’t matter which country you’re in, or what university you visit, there’s a common refrain that you’ll hear in the halls of J-schools across the globe: “I’m not good at math”. Of course, this aversion often leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If students don’t think they’re good at numbers, they avoid them altogether. Yet, to find and accurately report on stories in today’s data intensive society, journalists need these skills. This calls for a reconsideration of j...| datajournalism.com
Data visualisation has become a natural companion for journalists reporting complex data stories in both print and in digital formats. But visual cues are just one of many possible ways to encode data, and humans have been embedding data into the properties of physical objects for millennia (think of the Peruvian quipus). Despite this ancient history, the term ‘data physicalisation’ has only just appeared in academic literature quite recently, in a 2015 paper by Yvonne Jansen, Pierre Drag...| datajournalism.com
One of the most dangerous things a woman can do is give birth. In recent years, health officials around the world have been working to reduce this age-old threat to mothers. And as Michael Ollove, a senior health reporter with Stateline revealed in late 2018, there’s good news. “Over the past three decades,” Michael wrote, “the world has seen a steady decline in the number of women dying from childbirth.” The bad news? “There has been a notable outlier,” he wrote. “The United ...| datajournalism.com
In 2015, Jacob Harris -- who was then working for the New York Times as a software architect -- wrote about different methods of empathy used in visuals, from using people as icons instead of dots, and zooming in on a singular slice of a larger issue. He worried that standing too far from the humanity of the topic being visualised was a disservice to audiences. “As data journalists, we often prefer the ‘20,000 foot view’, placing points on a map or trends on a chart. And so we often gra...| datajournalism.com
Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there. While this statement is true for many things, there’s perhaps no better way to describe the emergence of data journalism in radio. Since the field gained momentum in 2012, newsrooms around the globe have approached data with their eyes first -- adopting the latest and greatest visualisation tools and techniques, advocating for mobile-first and responsive design, and wow-ing readers with increasingly immersive data visu...| datajournalism.com
At its most core, the essential work of journalism is to gather and verify non-public information, evaluate its potential value to the public, and then -- if that value is substantial enough -- organise and publish it in such a way that it helps people make informed decisions about their lives. In a very important sense, this means that reporting and publishing around leaked data is no different than any other reporting: Once verified, the question of what to publish, and how, is driven princ...| datajournalism.com
When we talk about blockchain and journalism, the focus is often on trust and sustainability. But the technology also opens up a whole new world of data…| DataJournalism.com
How solutions storytelling can engage local communities and bring local reporters together to solve the climate crisis.| DataJournalism.com
In order to display three-dimensional world we live in, journalists are forced to distort reality. And every map does so in its own way. Maarten…| DataJournalism.com
How can data journalists report on the increasingly common government Internet shutdowns? In this article, you'll find real-world examples and resources.| DataJournalism.com
DataJournalism.com celebrates some of the most noteworthy covid-related data stories of 2020.| DataJournalism.com
This article can give you a hand with creating structured approaches to news consumption and research. It includes practical tips about tools & resources.| DataJournalism.com
Your newsroom needs a policy for sharing personal information. Here are some ideas on how to get started with data journalism and keep your sources safe.| DataJournalism.com
Read this article to learn how data journalism can fight and expose disinformation in the war in Ukraine.| DataJournalism.com
How can journalists preserve their interactive data journalism pieces? Professor Bahareh Heravi analyses the problem and provides solutions for ensuring…| DataJournalism.com
Existing data-driven tools and software can help alleviate the pressure points for journalists in their day-to-day reporting. Monika Jones explains how.| DataJournalism.com
From the 1950s to the present day, journalism professor and author Brant Houston explores how data journalism began.| DataJournalism.com
Data journalism isn't just for hard news. Sabrina Faramarzi explains how journalists can inject data into their lifestyle coverage.| DataJournalism.com
A guide for using data recipes and digital methods for investigating conspiracy theories online.| DataJournalism.com
Sherry Ricchiardi provides a journalist's guide to war reporting using data through the lens of the Syrian war.| DataJournalism.com
Learn how to use data in a creative and inventive way through hand-drawing data visualisations with Dr Amelia McNamara.| DataJournalism.com
Sonification is all around us. But how can journalists use sound for data storytelling? Miriam Quick and Duncan Geere explain how.| DataJournalism.com
The most-read piece on The Washington Post's website visualised how diseases like COVID-19 spread and how to flatten the curve.| DataJournalism.com
Many journalists see themselves as “word people” and shy away from writing about numbers. Brant Houston shows how to embrace math with an overview of…| DataJournalism.com
Data are never neutral ‘givens’, but always situated in a particular context, collected for a particular reason.| DataJournalism.com
Wikidata can be a useful resource for journalists digging for data on a deadline. Here is a guide to using the community-edited database as a data source.| DataJournalism.com