Investigating data journalism

Scraping together the best tools, techniques and tactics of the data journalism trade.

Great journalism has always been based on adding context, clarity and compelling storytelling to facts. While the tools have improved, the art is the same: explaining the who, what, where, when and why behind the story. The explosion of data, however, provides new opportunities to think about reporting, analysis and publishing stories.

As you may know, there’s already a Data Journalism Handbook to help journalists get started. (I contributed some commentary to it). Over the next month, I’m going to be investigating the best data journalism tools currently in use and the data-driven business models that are working for news startups. We’ll then publish a report that shares those insights and combines them with our profiles of data journalists.

Why dig deeper? Getting to the heart of what’s hype and what’s actually new and noteworthy is worth doing. I’d like to know, for instance, whether tutorials specifically designed for journalists can be useful, as Joe Brockmeier suggested at ReadWrite. On a broader scale, how many data journalists are working today? How many will be needed? What are the primary tools they rely upon now? What will they need in 2013? Who are the leaders or primary drivers in the area? What are the most notable projects? What organizations are embracing data journalism, and why?

This isn’t a new interest for me, but it’s one I’d like to found in more research. When I was offered an opportunity to give a talk at the second International Open Government Data Conference at the World Bank this July, I chose to talk about open data journalism and invited practitioners on stage to share what they do. If you watch the talk and the ensuing discussion in the video below, you’ll pick up great insight from the work of the Sunlight Foundation, the experience of Homicide Watch and why the World Bank is focused on open data journalism in developing countries.

The sites and themes that I explored in that talk will be familiar to Radar readers, focusing on the changing dynamic between the people formerly known as the audience and the editors, researchers and reporters who are charged with making sense of the data deluge for the public good. If you’ve watched one of my Ignites or my Berkman Center talk, much of this won’t be new to you, but the short talk should be a good overview of where I think this aspect of data journalism is going and why I think it’s worth paying attention to today.

For instance, at the Open Government Data Conference Bill Allison talked about how open data creates government accountability and reveals political corruption. We heard from Chris Amico, a data journalist who created a platform to help a court reporter tell the story of every homicide in a city. And we heard from Craig Hammer how the World Bank is working to build capacity in media organizations around the world to use data to show citizens how and where borrowed development dollars are being spent on their behalf.

The last point, regarding capacity, is a critical one. Just as McKinsey identified a gap between available analytic talent and the demand created by big data, there is a data science skills gap in journalism. Rapidly expanding troves of data are useless without the skills to analyze it, whatever the context. An over focus on tech skills could exclude the best candidates for these jobs — but there will need to be training to build them.

This reality hasn’t gone unnoticed by foundations or the academy. In May, the Knight Foundation gave Columbia University $2 million for research to help close the data science skills gap. (I expect to be talking to Emily Bell, Jonathan Stray and the other instructors and students.)

Media organizations must be able to put data to work, a need that was amply demonstrated during Hurricane Sandy, when public open government data feeds became critical infrastructure.

What I’d like to hear from you is what you see working around the world, from the Guardian to ProPublica, and what you’re working on, and where. To kick things off, I’d like to know which organizations are doing the most innovative work in data journalism.

Please weigh in through the comments or drop me a line at alex@oreilly.com or at @digiphile on Twitter.

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