Data Journalism

The digital age has no doubt effected the ways people consume information. Online technology has shrunk the 24 hour news cycle to one of minutes, or sometimes seconds. People don't need the morning newspaper or wait for the 6 o'clock newscast to rehash a story or event they learned hours ago on Twitter.

Although this has led to races to get the story first and the issues that come with that, the traditional vessels of journalism still suffer by the instantaneous nature of the news cycle. Instead of battling with it, data journalist Peter Verweij says journalists should embrace this new age of information and use it to their advantages when crafting stories:

"According to Verweij, readers don’t want to read the same thing in print that they have seen online either on news platforms or social media. He says that journalism should be about producing news, not rehashing it. For the data journalist this is where data comes in. He argues that people want good quality reporting and analytical stories that inform them.

He says that this data is available and that all journalists need is to do is use the technologies that are available to them to understand that data and construct it into a story."

The Guardian have been one of the leaders in embracing data journalism and their website has a massive list of stories it has done with data research being a crutch of the story. Their data-driven story on the status of the Fukushima Japan nuclear reactors is the highest reacted to data journalism piece they have done, according to The Guardian.

Here in Canada, data journalism has been beneficial to at least one news organization. In 2010, Global created their own data journalism team. Since their inception, the team has won several media awards and wrote a great story on the structural damage to the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto.

While the team is small, Global believes that in the long run, the data journalism team could have a big payoff for the organization:

"At a time when newsrooms are laying off staff and mounting paywalls, Global has recently revamped its website and just finished a hiring spree for its online team. The data team is one of early investments Global News made digitally. While other investigative teams are more broad ranging in their mate, Global's data desk devotes its time entirely to filing FOI requests, analyzing the results of those data requests and writing specifically data-led stories. They also collaborate with the television side of Global News on merit."

If Global continues to have success with data-driven investigations, more news organizations could follow suit. This shows that while journalists might have to dig deeper, good stories still exist to be reported on.