“Adapt or Die” — Data at Yale
Data Journalism is a rapidly advancing and exciting new field in journalism. And like any new field, there are questions about effective data journalism — ranging from best practices and tools to standards and ethical conundrums.
The Data Journalism Conference organized by the Information Society Project at the Yale Law School on Mar 9th was an attempt to get industry practitioners, experts, veteran journalists and lawyers to discuss the best practices followed of news teams at major news organizations as well as debate on implications of the questions that data journalism raises.
Panel 1: Data Journalism Forms and Practices
This panel kicked off with an intriguing statement. Amanda Cox, a Graphics Editor at The New York Times challenged the term “data journalism” stating that if it is a real form of journalism, then it doesn’t need the qualifier “data.” She then gave a brief overview of successful projects at the Times, along with the elements that made them successful. For example, the Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget allows readers to virtually control the nation’s finances, while The Jobless Rate for People Like You drives home the point that”Not all groups have felt the recession equally.”
First Panel: Amanda Cox, Reginald Chua, Katharine Jarmul, Dafna Linzer and Simon Ferrari
Reginald Chua, editor of Data and Innovation at Thomson Reuters spoke on the evolution of data journalism as well as the paradigm shift it requires for legacy news organizations. He also addressed issues of privacy, immediacy and the availability of data.
Katharine Jarmul, lead developer at Loud3r was emphatic about fostering a spirit of collaboration between editorial and IT teams in order to deliver effective data journalism pieces. “Data is no fun without a story,” she said. She also put in perspective the capabilities and limitations of the developer-journalist communities and laid to rest a few myths about them.
Dafna Linzer, a Senior Investigative Reporter at ProPublica, walked the audience through the project “Presidential Pardons Heavily Favor Whites.” She spoke of the challenges of putting this project together (there was no data!) to the time and effort invested to put it together (almost a year).
Simon Ferrari, Game designer for journalists is working on an exciting research area — Newsgames. He spoke of it as the next frontier where simulation is key, just like a video game. The basic premise of his presentation was that stories about current events, infographics etc. can be translated to videogames in order to engage audiences better.
The ensuing discussion included debates about open-sourcing code (some organizations do, others don’t), how smaller news organizations can still do great data journalism (using open source tools, publicly available data), how data can be verified and annotating infographics to direct the audience’s attention. Another important issue discussed was the slow turnaround of data that makes it difficult to accompany breaking news items with data journalism pieces.
Part 2: The Influence of Data on News Work
The second panel focused on problems brought up by these new data journalism tools and practices. What responsibility do journalists have to the data? What about the confidentiality and privacy concerns related to the data? How reliable is the data released by government?
C.W. Anderson, assistant professor of Media Culture at College of Staten Island presented “Teaching a great many numbers and pieces of paper to speak clearly — the long history of data journalism.” He pointed out that it’s the journalists’ job to make their sources “talk.” Brian Boyer, news applications editor at Chicago Tribune and creator of the PANDA Project, gave a witty and thought-provoking talk about data journalism as craft.
Brian Boyer
Hannah Fairfield, graphics director from Washington Post, discussed how her team worked with many political journalists, to develop with The U.S. Congress Votes Database. Fairfield also pointed out that many times we ourselves become the data, as illustrated in the projects Mapping the census and Is life getting better or worse?
After that, Matt Stiles, a data journalist from NPR, talked about the inevitability of the new trends in data journalism. While some journalists are still writing traditional “He said” or “She said”, stories instead of studying data, he suggested that data the empirical nature of journalism reveals patterns and empowers audience. “Adapt or die,” said Stiles.
Finally, author and journalist Steven Waldman, addressed the other side of the question: where does data come from? Since much data comes from government, it takes a lot of effort to clean up. Is data journalism about these “pyrrhic” victories? What does the rise of data journalism say about the need for systems of open, transparent government? Audience and lecturers discussed these questions along with the economic value of data in the digital era and user engagement.
