On 15 December 2009, diggers roared into life on the outskirts of the little-known Chinese city of Zhuhai. Hundreds of workers scurried back and forth tools-in-hand as they began to create an artificial island on the western edge of the Pearl River Delta. …

Regrets, I’ve had a few. But then again, this newsletter is not one of them. It’s been a lot of fun and a great learning experience doing 1801. A few of you wrote to me asking what was going on — apologies, I had left things on a bit of…

Hello everyone. This newsletter is here to champion innovative and fun ways of communicating information. I want to keep doing that, but change lies ahead. There will be a slightly different focus — on how stories are found, as well as how they‘re visualised. There might be a new section…

While AR and VR certainly won’t — anytime soon — be making the impact on journalism that its hype suggests, experiments such as this tour of France’s Mont Blanc are worth a look. It’s been wonderful to see the somewhat unexpected rise of local journalism through the likes of the…

Apologies, but I went on a road trip during the Easter holiday and consumed an ungodly amount of food. Hence why this is a day late. Still, 1801 rises again! David Ottewell writes about the transformation of his Trinity Mirror data unit over the last five years, arguing that data…

Good Monday. I’m back. Datawrapper is on fire at the moment — innovating and developing at a pace never seen before with visualisation tools — and you can hear them on the ever-eccentric Data Stories podcast. Their latest blog post also explores how different levels of granular data can tell…

Hi 1801 readers. There’s an excellent post by OpenNews Source about how to do great data stories, another about the challenge of visualising data about refugees, a third that is David Ottewell’s round-up of the work done by his Trinity Mirror data unit, and a fourth by the Office for…

I’ve got to say, this must be one of the strongest editions of 1801 on record. Before that: The Data Journalism Awards published a blog on the state of data around the world, from China to Kenya. The Economist wrote about how they’re trying to make data journalism flourish on…