by Jason Mccoy
There are many misunderstandings about how data can help journalism be more innovative, and it is surprising to many that journalists are using data in many different ways to tell stories in the digital age of journalism. Paul Bradshaw in The Data Journalism Handbook describes data journalism as, "perhaps it is the new possibilities that open up when you combine the traditional 'nose for news' and ability to tell a compelling story, with the sheer scale and range of digital information now available. Data journalism can help a journalist tell a complex story through engaging infographics. Data can be the source of data journalism, or it can be the tool with which the story is told — or it can be both."
Prior to the digital revolution and access to Big Data journalists were able to tell stories about demographics within the population, but data journalists today can tell stories with more precision that include small neighborhoods and communities. In What does data journalism look like today? A 10-step guide Simon Rogers explains the impact of data on journalism as, "now we have new sources of data that tell us something more: the state of the global brain — the opinions of millions of people is now something we can see in real time. My team works on am tool that provides one set of insights: Google Trends. We've only had real time data for the last two years and the field of search data analysis is comparatively new, which means we're still exploring new ways of understanding that data." He continues saying, "there is never less data. More data breeds a greater need for data journalism to help interpret it."
Data journalism uses numbers to tell stories which leads many people to have the misconception that data journalism is boring. The goal of data journalists is to tell stories in the best way possible which may include infographics and comical videos to tell stories in a fun and engaging way. Another misconception people have is the belief that a data journalist has to also be a coder. It is helpful to have coding skills as a data journalist, but it is not a requirement because the collaboration between website developers and data journalists combine coding and story-telling skills to tell the best stories. Additionally, there are tools to assist data journalists with their coding deficiencies. Rogers says, "Flourish, built by Kiln (which the Google News Lab is making open to newsrooms), allows you to re-use visualizations in a way that wasn't possible for non-coders. It allows data editors and designers to share their visuals with non-coders." Big data has enabled journalists to tell stories in different and better ways and there are tools to assist those that are not coders, so if you have a passion for journalism then you should be excited about the new innovative ways that journalists are telling stories using data.
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