Last week’s readings introduced us to data journalism and what it all entails. This week is focusing on more of the application of data journalism, particularly in the newsrooms. One of the questions I proposed for the last discussion was whether or not data journalism can help alleviate news stories that apppear as “fluff”. Well the newsrooms’ application of data journalism seems to bring it back to its informative roots while embarking on new media techniques.
One thing I’ve noticed in the readings is the use of teams for data journalism projects. At this point, it is fairly new and many people are not equipped with the an equal skill set (i.e. journalists know as much about digital as reporting and vice versa.). So places such as the Chicago Tribune and the Australian Broadcast company are using large teams comprised reporters and web developers that have a equal hand in both areas. But likely you wont find that option so what are you suppose to do? Perhaps look around your IT department or anybody who looks like a “geek”. If they have skeptical views on journalism then try to convince them that they are able to affect the world with their very own work.
So now you have people with experience in both but is data journalism really that complicated? You may never know until you find out for yourself which some encourage you to do. Start off by learning what some of the codes and languages are used for then practice them on your own. By doing this you are seeing what your expertise is at and can determine what kind of stories you want to report and how you can report them. For code there is so many online tools such as W3 Schools that help Something else that may help while you are coding is thinking of a question to answer. Not every infographic is about crime rates. One infographic reported on the world population exceeding 7 billion so it allowed people to type in their birthday and find out what number they were amongst that 7 billion. So when learning this code it is okay to be creative in the same capacity you can be creative in writing a story.
1. How willing are journalists to learn code and programming language independently to create more data stories?
2. How vital is it that news companies make their revenue stream involve something relevant to data?
3. What stories are actually better for being explained through data journalism?
4. What ways do infographics not attract the reader?
5. Where are employers more likely to hire their digital experts: within the company by searching through the IT department or will they take a chance on a field of applicants?
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