10 things every journalist should know about data

NEWS:REWIRED: by SARAH MARSHALL

Picture from News:Rewired website

Every journalist needs to know about data. It is not just the preserve of the investigative journalist but can – and should – be used by reporters writing for local papers, magazines, the consumer and trade press and for online publications.

Think about crime statistics, government spending, bin collections, hospital infections and missing kittens and tell me data journalism is not relevant to your title.

If you think you need to be a hacker as well as a hack then you are wrong. Although data journalism combines journalism, research, statistics and programming, you may dabble but you don’t need to know much maths or code to get started. It can be as simple as copying and pasting data from an Excel spreadsheet. [Read more…]