Illustration: Ramachandran

The big question facing those who are totally new to data driven journalism is how far down the coding rabbit hole would one have to go if one enters the field. Is it all going to be very technical? Will it involve a lot of coding?

Being able to handle data - assess the potential for finding news in datasets, assess its integrity, query, clean and analyse datasets and build a data-driven narrative, invariably using visualisations, need not necessarily involve coding - up to a point. Tools like spreadsheets could be used for this purpose without coding skills coming into play.

Spreadsheets apart, there are any number of other user-friendly tools that require no knowledge of coding. Such tools cover the entire gamut of data processing and visualisation. But if customisation and advanced analysis is required then more complex tools come into the picture and these might demand coding skills. Especially when the level of sophistication and interactivity are complex.

After a point, handling technical tools and programming may become an integral part of the day-to-day work - especially if one is part of a dedicated team that does only data journalism and the work flow includes coding.

“Inevitably, there is a point where data and code become companions. Perhaps when Google Sheets slows down because of the size of a data set; when Excel formulas become too arcane; or when it becomes impossible to make sense of data spanning hundreds of rows. Coding can make working with data simpler, more elegant, less repetitive and more repeatable,” says Basile Simon in the Data Journalism Handbook - Coding With Data in the Newsroom. “Different people learn different programming languages and techniques; different newsrooms produce their work in different languages, too.”

It depends on the scale of the projects in question. At one end of the spectrum it could just be a matter of making something like a simple bar chart to illustrate a set of figures. And at the other end it could involve handling big data sets and doing complex visualisations. As one moves from one end of the spectrum to the other, so will the demands increase on knowledge of technical skillsets, including those related to programming languages, web technologies and data visualisation tools.

A question of range

But it is the medium, the particular organisation and the kind of projects it take up that will have a bearing on all of this. Preparing a package that is meant for print is quite different from one that is to be featured online. For instance, in my workflow, I sometimes had to place more emphasis on the print product than the online one, which meant that apart from using standard tools for data analysis, I would have also have to a graphics vector editor to mould the final output for print.

So the bottom line is that you can start off with no coding and relatively easy tools and see where that takes you. But if you are really into data journalism your quickly realise that if coding is required to get the job done, you will be excited by the prospect of taking up the challenge.

“As data journalists grow in skill and craft, they move from using basic statistics in their reporting to working in spreadsheets, to more complex data analysis and visualization, finally arriving at computational journalism, the command line,and programming. The most advanced practitioners are able to capitalize on algorithms and vast computing power to deliver new forms of reporting and analysis, from document miningapplied to find misconduct,to reverse engineering political campaigns, price discrimination, executive stock trading plans, and autocompletions,” says The Art and Science of Data-driven Journalism, from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, published in 2017.

Created: April 14, 2021; updated: May 9, 2021.