In this extract from a book chapter in the new Routledge Companion to Visual Journalism, I look at how the explosion of data as a source for journalists, and the separation of content from interface in online publishing, have combined to lay the foundations for a range of new storytelling forms, from interactive infographics and timelines to charticles and scrollytelling.
Although the term ‘data journalism’ is a relatively recent one, popularised around 2010, data has been part of journalism throughout its history, from early newsletters covering stock prices and shipping schedules in the 17th century, to The Guardian’s 1821 first edition front page table of school spending, US investigations of politicians’ travel expenses in the 1840s and campaigning factchecking of lynching in the 1890s.
The introduction of computers into the newsroom in the 20th century added a new dimension to the practice. After some early experimentation by CBS News in predicting the outcome of the 1952 presidential election by applying computer power to data, a major breakthrough came in the 1960s with Philip Meyer’s use of databases and social science methods to investigate the causes of riots in Detroit.
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