One of the most common challenges in factual storytelling is identifying the right human sources to turn an idea into a fleshed out story. And one of the most common mistakes is not to spend enough time on this vital step.
To help with this, here’s a framework for brainstorming potential sources.
There are five categories of source in the framework:
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One of the most basic sources of story ideas for a journalist is a news diary listing forthcoming newsworthy events. For the journalist looking for ideas in data, having forthcoming data releases in your diary can be especially useful.
Here is a quick guide preparing your own data news diary.
Continue readingThe database query language SQL pops up in all sorts of places when you’re working with data — especially big data — and can be a very useful way to query data in spreadsheets, APIs and coding. This video, made for students on the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University, explains what SQL is, the different places you will come across it, and how to get started with SQL queries.
You’ll find related resources and tutorials in the repo here.
UPDATE: Thanks to Tony Hirst in the comments for pointing me to his post about browser-based SQL tools.
This video is shared as part of a series of video posts.
Three key terms you might hear used in data journalism circles are “open data“, “linked data” and “big data“. This video, made for students on the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University, explores definitions of the three terms, explains some of the jargon used in relation to them, and the critical and ethical issues to consider in relation to open and big data in particular.
Three other video clips are mentioned in the video, and these are embedded below. First of all, Tim Berners-Lee‘s 2009 call for “raw data now”, where he outlined the potential of open and linked data…
Continue readingTransmedia storytelling is the process of telling a story across multiple platforms. Henry Jenkins coined the term when he noticed how different stories from a single ‘story world’ were being distributed between films, animated shorts, comic books and games. But the same principle has been applied to news reporting where different information about a news event might be reported on Twitter, Facebook Live, radio broadcasts and a dedicated news website.
In this video, made for students on the MA in Data Journalism and the MA in Multiplatform and Mobile Journalism at Birmingham City University, I explain how transmedia is different to simple multiplatform or multimedia publishing; the news situations where a transmedia approach might be appropriate for journalists; and tips in planning a transmedia news project.
This video is shared as part of a series of video posts.
Some of the best interactive storytelling involves the use of JavaScript — what has sometimes been called “JavaScript Journalism“. This video, made for students on the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University, explains what JavaScript journalism is, the story formats that are often created with JavaScript, some useful JavaScript libraries, and how to get started.
If you’re interested in this video you might also enjoy the previous two video posts in this series, on concepts of interactivity and on genres of interactivity.
This video is shared as part of a series of video posts.
Interactive storytelling can be a tricky thing to plan for. This video, made for students on the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University, explores different genres of interactivity — from quizzes and image maps to ‘choose your own adventure’ interactives and newsgames — and the different considerations when planning a story within each of those genres. You can find a related video on concepts of interactivity here.
The video refers to a number of examples — you can find links to those below.
Links mentioned:
Continue readingWhen people talk about interactivity they don’t necessarily mean one thing. This video, made for students on the MA in Data Journalism and the MA in Multiplatform and Mobile Journalism at Birmingham City University, explores some of the different elements of interactivity identified by research, and how a knowledge of these can help you think more critically and creatively about incorporating interactivity into your journalism. (A future video looks at genres of interactivity).
The video refers to a number of examples — you can find links to those below.
Links mentioned:
Continue readingData journalists don’t necessarily need to know how to create webpages — but a basic understanding of HTML and CSS can be useful when communicating with designers and developers, when generating HTML output in R notebooks, when creating advanced visualisation, or when getting into scraping.
In this video — first made for students on the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University and shared as part of a series of video posts — I provide an introduction to the aspects of HTML and CSS that are helpful for those starting out with data journalism. It is best watched alongside the previous video on responsive web design.
As news audiences have moved from desktop-based to primarily mobile consumption, the news industry has moved to mobile-first production — but it’s very easy to forget mobile when working on a data journalism project.
In this video — first made for students on the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University and shared as part of a series of video posts — I explain what considerations a data journalist should have when approaching a story with a mobile-first mindset, and some useful tools to help you see what a story looks like on different devices.
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