[This article was written by student reporters of IJAsia18.] Data and tools for analyzing and visualizing it are more accessible now than ever before. More  newsrooms are building stories centered on spreadsheets and statistics, tapping into the incredible explanatory power of data journalism. But for many reporters trained to think of a “graph” as a collection of words, not numbers, breaking into the data journalism field can be intimidating. During the State of Data Journalism session at the 3rd Asian Investigative Journalism Conference on October 5, three data professionals shared their insights on how to get started in the field and create data-driven stories with reverberating impact.

Getting Started with Data

Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) Executive Editor in Digital News Taehyung Kim’s advice is to “just begin.” When he first started experimenting with data in 2014, he started out making a simple graph with Tableau, an easy to use data visualization program. The graph might not have been very sophisticated, but it was the first step on his path to becoming a professional data journalist. Four years later, he’s graduated from basic charts to using the R programming language and natural language processing software to analyze the content of Donald Trump’s tweets.

There’s many resources available for journalists looking to increase their data reporting skills. Khalid Khattak, founder of Pakistan’s first data journalism initiative, Data Stories, recommended looking for free online courses about data analysis and data journalism. Those especially invested in data journalism could also consider applying for one of the graduate data journalism programs, such as Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Data Journalism degree, that are becoming more common at universities worldwide. There will also be several skills-intensive data and coding workshops at the Uncovering Asia workshop for attendees looking to learn basic skills over the weekend.

▲Taehyung Kim, executive editor in digital news at KBS, is sharing the MERS report of KBS’ data team.

Finding Data

Jennifer LaFleur, Data Editor of Investigative Reporting Workshop, shared that there are four main ways of finding data for a story: downloading it from a reliable online source, scraping it from websites yourself, taking advantage of open records laws (depending on the country) to request it from the government, and building your own database from scratch.

For reporters new to data journalism, the easiest way to get started with a story is to find existing data online. Khattak advised reporters to check if their country runs an open data initiative, which are becoming more and more common. The United States government open data website, data.gov, was another valuable source since, as Khattak said, America has interests everywhere, making it possible for global journalists to find information on their region. Khattak also discussed Google’s Dataset search engine, a promising tool launched one month ago that will let users directly search for datasets.

LaFleur noted that reporters must carefully check the quality of their data, however, by vetting the quality of the websites they source it from. She recommended ProPublica’s data journalism guides as a good resource for ensuring that both data and traditional reporting are held to the same high standards.

Building a Data Team

Though many journalists begin experimenting with data reporting individually, many large, established news organizations now have dedicated data teams. KBS’ data team, for example, consists of two data journalists, two data analysts, and one developer. Though Kim shared that this team is still relatively small, collaboration between journalists and professional programmers has allowed KBS to take on ambitious projects, like creating an interactive network graph of how the MERS virus spread through Korean hospitals.

▲KBS created this graph to visualize the spread of MERS in Korea.

Newsroom leaders may hesitate to support developing data teams, however, because they are reluctant to devote precious time and resources to work that they may not see the value in. LaFleur advised aspiring data journalists trying to win the support of management to focus on little success stories, adding simple but powerful graphs and statistics to stories to demonstrate the kinds of stories data can enable. This was the approach she took, and is now leading her own data team as a result of the momentum she built with her individual projects.

Kim emphasized that, once management has decided to form a data team, it’s important to find coders who want to work with journalists and are excited about contributing to articles that will serve the public good. “KBS has about 50 to 60 IT employees, but many of them don’t like to work with journalists,” Kim said to the laughter of the crowd. “They complain that reporters have a bad temper or they’re impatient. It’s not easy to find a suitable developer. If a programmer isn’t interested in journalism, they can’t really work with the newsroom.” Once a journalist-friendly programmer is located, however, the resulting synergy between their coding expertise and the reporting knowledge of the journalists they partner with can create incredibly impactful work.

Data Journalism Inspiration

Khattak, Kim, and LaFleur all shared recent examples of groundbreaking data journalism work. Khattak also recommended looking at past winners of the annual Data Journalism Awards for ideas and inspiration. Here are a few of the other noteworthy stories the panelists discussed:

1. Life in the Camps: This Reuters report used satellite images to explore how Rohingya refugees in Bangladeshi camps live.

2. The Neglected Bridges: This map from Norwegian news website VG visualizes damaged infrastructure in the country.

3. Till Death Do Us Part: This story from The Post and Courier, a local US newspaper, is an example of data journalism centered on a single number: in this case, the more than 300 South Carolina women have died violent deaths at the hands of men over the past decade.

4. Cameroon: Anatomy of a Killing: This BBC Africa report verified the authenticity of a video showing Cameroonian soldiers killing women and children. The journalists used advanced techniques, like mathematically analyzing the angles of shadows in the footage to verify when it was recorded, to defend the accuracy of the source.

report : Emma Stiefel