The journalism you make with data
By Sérgio Spagnuolo — founder, editor and intern of data journalism news agency Volt Data Lab
If you randomly start talking about data journalism, it is likely that someone will raise their hand and point out this is a redundant term, as journalism overall has always relied on data. That we should call it just journalism.
As much as I agree with this, a part of me is compelled to believe that data-driven journalism gained strength in recent years not just as another journalism specialization — like politics, fashion, arts, sports beats etc. — but rather as a new approach for journalism itself.
Journalism has always relied on much more than just data. Data was, very often, a resource used by newsrooms to deliver information at some basic level (like employment numbers), to contextualize news reports (like how many people attended a rally) and to back analysis or arguments made around certain topics (like ‘I said this, here is the data’).
David Leonhardt, editor of NYT’s Upshot, in a Google News Lab video from 2015, smartly said that “data is really just a tool, no different from other vital tools that we have in journalism — quotes, words, photography.”
This approach is not going anywhere. But now, compiling, analyzing, visualizing and reporting on data for the most part is a whole new game by itself. It is an approach being used to build the kind of stories that, not so long ago, only a handful of journalists, with extensive sources and resources available, could manage.
Just imagine a whole special feature on Sumo mostly based on centuries-old datasets, a huge report on how tennis matches were apparently rigged, or even a five paragraph story with an incredible graphic that conveys so much.
Think Watergate, but instead of Deep Throat calling in the dead of night and meeting you in underground parking lots, you got some individual sending 2.6 terabytes of data through encrypted files, a.k.a. the Panama Papers.
Of course, it is all still journalism, but those reporters are using a new methodological approach and tools to get stories out there.
It doesn’t mean that narrative-oriented, boots on the ground kind of stories, with reporters traveling for months in international waters or writing about an "Unbelievable Story of Rape", is disappearing or even losing ground. But it does mean that data geeks now get to share some of the glory of scoops and long-form journalism.
But with the abundance of data we can all access nowadays, the media industry needs more people and more news ventures acting vigorously on data journalism.
It is precisely because new technologies allow us to work with data on this level that data journalism should finally earn the right to be called that, with no reservations. And maybe, just maybe, as Peter Fray puts it, use it to regain trust in journalism overall.
