Data journalism tips in Albanian (Të gjesh histori në faqet e Excel-it)

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Data journalism book Stories with Spreadsheets

I spent some time recently in Albania delivering some training in data journalism to journalists. While I was there, the translator Ermal Como translated two chapters of my data journalism book Finding Stories in Spreadsheets, and a 14-page cribsheet for Excel formulae, into Albanian.

In addition, there is an exercise on learning spreadsheet techniques by finding stories in European Investment Bank data.

With his permission I’ve made the three documents available for anyone who might find them useful. You can find them embedded below: Continue reading →

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Journalism ethics as a mobile app: why one Turkish student journalist decided to venture into game journalism

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Furkan

Game journalism — using games to inform audiences about current news events — has become an established form. But few games are created to simulate the experience of journalists themselves — and even fewer still are launched while the author is still a student. In a guest post for OJB, Sania Aziz spoke to Turkish journalism student Ömer Furkan Aktaş, the creator of one such game: Ethics: Journalist’s Way. Continue reading →

Kevin Anderson: “Nuzzel newsletters can help journalists build their profile and serve audiences better”

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Kevin Anderson

Kevin Anderson photo by Arttu Silvast

Kevin Anderson has been working in the digital space for two decades, holding managerial roles at the BBC, the Guardian and Gannett. His online network is one of the foundations of a must-read daily email newsletter rounding up developments in the field. In a special guest post for OJB, Emily Lowes speaks to the freelance journalist and digital strategist about email newsletters and his advice for others looking to get started.

Kevin Anderson has been publishing a daily email newsletter on Nuzzel — an online service which offers news discovery and curation based on users’ interests — for over two years now. He says that Nuzzel newsletters “can help journalists build their profile and intentionally serve their audiences better”. Continue reading →

Journalism’s 3 conflicts — and the promise it almost forgot

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As 2018 comes to an end, in an extract from the introduction to Mobile-First Journalism I look at how the past few years have shaped the current face of mobile and social-native journalism — and what that means for its future.

The mood around mobile and social changed dramatically in 2018. To those working in the field, it could sometimes feel like being caught in the crossfire of a battle. Fake news, Russian trolls, concerns over filter bubbles and hoaxes, censorship, algorithms and profit warnings have all shown that the path to mobile-first publishing is going to be anything but an easy one.

Like any new territory, the mobile landscape is being fought over fiercely. But take a step back from the crossfire and you will see that different actors are fighting over different things, in different ways: and there isn’t just one battle — but three. Continue reading →

Data Journalism Awards 2019 open for entries

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Data Journalism Awards 2019 logo

The Data Journalism Awards is now accepting entries for its 2019 awards.

It’s the 8th year of the awards. This year the “Best data journalism team” category has been divided into two categories: small and large teams, with the “Small newsrooms (one or more winners)” category making way for the change.

The awards website has also been revamped to include a range of resources for data journalists, a “Community” section (in addition to the existing Slack group) and news on data journalism developments.

The deadline to enter is 7 April 2019. Winners get an all-expenses-covered trip to June’s Global Editors Network (GEN) Summit and Data Journalism Awards ceremony.

Data journalism in Hungary: how Átlátszó’s new datavis project seeks to be both investigative and educational

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In Hungary, not-for-profit news site Átlátszó has launched a full-time data team to create a wide range of data visualisations and data-driven stories. Amanda Loviza spoke to data journalist Attila Bátorfy about his plans to have Átló raise the quality of data journalism in Hungary.

Átlátszó was created in 2011 as Hungary’s first crowd-funded independent investigative news site, with a stated goal of holding the powerful accountable.

Data journalist Attila Bátorfy joined the site two and a half years ago. It was not long before he told editor-in-chief Tamás Bodoky that the site needed a whole separate team to produce higher quality data visualisations. Continue reading →

FAQ: Do you think that an increase in algorithms is leading to a decline in human judgement?

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recipe by Phillip Stewart

This algorithm has been quality tested. Image by Phillip Stewart

The latest in my series of FAQ posts follows on from the last one, in response to a question from an MA student at City University who posed the question “Do you think that an increase in algorithmic input is leading to a decline in human judgement?”. Here’s my response.

Does an increase in computation lead to a decline in human input?

Firstly, it’s important to emphasise that the vast majority of data journalism involves no algorithms or automation at all: it’s journalists making calculations, which historically they would have done manually.

You mention the possibility that “an increase in computation leads to a decline in human input”. An analogy would be to ask whether an increase in pencils leads to a decline in human input in art. Continue reading →