Data journalism is “a way of enhancing reporting and news writing with the use and examination of statistics in order to provide a deeper insight into a news story and to highlight relevant data,” says this Wikipedia entry.
That goes as far as a generic definition would in providing an insight into data journalism, but we are looking for much more. So here are some resources that will go a long way in enriching one’s understanding of the field in all its variety. This short list is restricted to resources that can be accessed for free online.
Starting point
Two chapters in the The Data Journalism Handbook 2 are a good starting point. The Handbook itself is segmented into a number of themes, each of which deals with one aspect of data journalism.
In-depth
The The Data Journalism Handbook 2 - Towards a Critical Data Practice brought out by European Journalism Centre and Google News Initiative will greatly help widen one's understanding of the field of data journalism.
As the introduction sets out, the book tries to answer these questions: What is data journalism? What is it for? What might it do? What opportunities and limitations does it present? Who and what is involved in making and making sense of it?
In the process it also showcases projects from different parts of the world. The chapter titled, 'Working with data', also showcases a variety of projects, some of which are truly innovative.
This book is meant to 'complement' version 1 of the Handbook, according to its publishers. This version, dates back to 2012, and has more of a 'how to' orientation compared to version 1.
“Data journalism has come to mean virtually any act of journalism that touches electronically held records and statistics—in other words, virtually all of journalism”, says Sarah Cohen in the chapter titled Ways of Doing Data Journalism. It is a chapter that explores the range of data journalism.
The other chapter, From The Guardian to Google News Lab: A Decade of Working in Data Journalism outlines the unfolding and development of data journalism during the past decade or so and touches on the key milestones during this period. The story of how it “went from being the province of a few loners to an established part of many major newsrooms.”
A Google News Lab data journalism survey, conducted in 2017, finds that that data journalists categorize their work into three ‘buckets’ - stories that are enriched by data, investigative data journalism and stories that explain data. The survey also looks at the challenges they face.
The Art and Science of Data-Driven Journalism, from the The Tow Center for Digital Journalism, that dates back to 2014, deals with the evolution of data journalism in a fairly comprehensive manner. It also deals with data journalism education and training, business models, tools, open data and projects and trends; particularly interesting is a series of interviews with ‘practitioners’ of data journalism.
The larger journalism context
For key general trends related to the media, we have the annual Digital News Report, brought out by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. The last one, published in 2020, dealt with “the impact of coronavirus on news consumption and on the economic prospects for publishers.” The site also incorporates a dashboard for exploring the data collected and generating visualisations.
The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) in its report The 2019 State of Technology in Global Newsrooms, referred to elsewhere on this site, presents insights into the adoption of digital technology in newsrooms, including data journalism.
Created: April 14, 2021; updated: May 8, 2021.