A flurry of articles are published each week purporting to give us a “progress report” on the state of data journalism. This week, Frederic Filloux of the Guardian and former Financial Times Journalist Tom Forensky debate whether the quality of data journalism is improving fast, or not fast enough. No matter which side of the argument you fall on, there’s no doubt that newsrooms are snapping up data journalists at a fast clip. To that end, the Knight Lab offers advice on the three types of people newsrooms should hire in order to build strong data journalism teams.
Your links for the week:
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Data Journalism is improving – fast (Guardian)
The last Data Journalism Awards established that the genre is getting better, wider in scope and gaining many creative players. - Is it Data Journalism Or Fancy Infographics? Progress Isn’t Fast Enough (Silicon Valley Watcher) The information conveyed is excellent but what does that do towards developing a sustainable business model for quality journalism? If data journalism can get us to that point then we can say it has made great progress but it’s not improving fast enough.
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Want to build a data journalism team? You’ll need these three people (Knight Lab)
When I started using software to analyze data as a reporter in the late 1980s, “data journalism” ended once my stories were published in the newspaper. Now the publication of the story is just the beginning. The same data can also be turned into compelling visualizations and into news applications that people can use long after the story is published. So data journalism — which was mostly a one-person job when I started doing it — is now a team sport. -
Monday Q&A: Denise Malan on the new data-driven collaboration between INN and IRE (Neiman Lab)
Denise Malan, formerly a investigative and data reporter at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, will fill the new role of INN director of data services, offering “dedicated data-analysis services to INN’s membership of more than 80 nonprofit investigative news organizations,” many of them three- or four-person teams that can’t find room or funding for a dedicated data reporter. -
Journalists weigh up pros and cons of open data in public forum (YouTube)
Dan Pacheco from Journovation SU, Matt Bernius from the Rochester chapter of Hacks and Hackers and Catherine Loper, news director at WRVO Public Radio, Oswego discuss the benefits and perils of partnering newsmakers with data analysts.