A slightly oldie – but still a goodie! Continuing from the previous post’s theme, here’s another great resource on data journalism. This is a 191-page handbook on what data journalism is, why it’s important, several examples of using data and journalism well together, including The Guardian’s Datablog – a personal favourite. With examples you can see how bringing journalism and writing together with good data practices, your research can tell a story and convince people.
For example, in the chapter ‘Start with the Data, Finish with a Story’,
To draw your readers in you have to be able to hit them with a headline figure that makes them sit up and take notice. You should almost be able to read the story without having to know that it comes from a dataset. Make it exciting and remember who your audience are as you go.
One example of this can be found in a project carried out by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism using the EU Commission’s Financial Transparency System. The story was constructed by approaching the data set with specific queries in mind.
We looked through the data for key terms like ‘cocktail’, ‘golf’ and ‘away days’. This allowed us to determine what the Commission had spent on these items and raised plenty of questions and story lines to follow up.
