Data Journalism

Data Journalism

Journalism is currently in a crisis of trust and also newspaper sales have been in decline since contents began being published online from various sources. However the Web shouldn’t be seen as a threat to journalism, because the digitization of information means that society will need journalists to interpret the vast amount of  information.  

In this on going turmoil situation, Data Journalism can show lights for newspaper business.

Data journalism in an approach to writing for the public in which the journalist analyzes large data sets to identify potential news stories. It is mainly data driven report. 

Data journalism will be for both  print and online media. Now the business world's obsessed with the power of data. All over the world, businesses are establishing themselves with the express purpose of leveraging the power of that data to make money.

Now one level, data journalism presents a future for journalism, based on trust, and is especially valuable in an era of unlimited online content with so much information around us. Journalist translating data can be a guide for readers, through the morass. And that means being trusted and that means you have a brand that's trusted and that's important. So there's a way to find trust, and trust is needed in journalism.

Take an example: 'WikiLeaks ', which has been providing the world lots of data last few years. Without storing data in DB , it never possible to disclose reports. All news giant like New York Times, Guardian, Bloomberg, BBC, CNN has been preserving data for doing data journalism.  

It may be beyond the traditional journalism but It useful and provides incredibly detailed information. Like Thomson Reuters, which is a numbers based organization that provides incredible amounts of data to people. The Economist is a famous magazine, but also has an intelligence unit which provides data products which acts almost as a consultancy.

The importance of stories generated by data lays in the end result: how it’s visualized into the consumers head, because there is nothing more senseless and readers have great attraction to numeric data and it's very trustworthy.  It is crucial to visualize the data to enhance the story quality for the readers to produce a story to clarify the information for the reader rather than confuse them.

One of the purposes of data journalism in society is to be critical with data, hence when faced with numbers and statistics of Government departments or private organizations,  journalists will have the ability to challenge them.

Data has always been a part of the way that news organizations work . A large number of our articles, news  based on some numeric data like killing, injure,  rape, accident, amount etc. If the news presented with the statistical analyzed data then it will be more powerful , attractive, transparent  and it will engaged more readers in both print and online.

Benefits :

1.       Make sense of Mass Information

           Having the skills to scrape, analyze, clean and present data allows journalists to present complicated and otherwise incomprehensible information in a clear way. It is an essential part of journalism to find material and present it to the public. These data allows journalists to do this with large amounts of information.

2.       New Approaches to Storytelling

          Able to create info-graphics and visualizations, data journalists can see and present information in a new and interesting way. Stories no longer need to be linear and based solely on text. Data can be grafted into a narrative which people can read visually. Interactive elements of data visualizations allow people to explore the information presented and make sense of it in their own way.

3.       Data Journalism is the Future

         Understanding data now will put journalists ahead of the game. Information is increasingly being sourced and presented using data. Journalists who refuse to adapt to the modern, increasingly technological world will be unable to get the best stories, by-lines and scoops and their careers will suffer as a result. So in the competitive market , they can't claim to be best.  

4.       Save Time

          No longer must journalists pore over spread-sheets and numbers for hours when there could be a simpler way to organize the information. Being technologically savvy and knowing the skills to apply to data sets can save journalists time when cleaning, organizing and making sense of data. Not making mistakes due to lack of knowledge can also save a journalist time.

5.       A way to see things

          Understanding large data sets can allow journalists to see significant information that they might otherwise have overlooked. Equally, some stories are best told using data visualizations as this enables people to see things that they might otherwise have been unable to understand.