Doing data in a journalism course
It’s a subject that isn’t going away and it’s also one that generate a huge amount of debate – data journalism. If ever there was a perfect hook to hang all of journalisms best and worst it’s data journalism! But a recent flurry of tweets and a nice ‘there’s no reason not to try this stuff’ post from Matt Waite focussed on one part of the debate – how should we be doing more of this in our j-courses and who should be doing it at.
It was something that Matt kicked off with a tweet:
Signs there is work to do: Data journalism is hottest thing going. Offer data journalism course. Two students sign up. Two.
— Matt Waite (@mattwaite) April 9, 2014
Quite a few people pitched in (an assortment of tweets below):
There is an interesting point in there about adjunct courses – essentially but not exclusively online courses – which I think is fair. There’s no better way to put journalists (and students) off than combining maths and computers!
As I said in my response, we do ‘data’ across all of our courses and I thought I’d share an example of the kind of intro practical stuff we are doing with first years (year one of three year degree). It’s done in the context of a broader intro to data and journalism and it’s developed and expanded throughout the three years (more so as we are shifting things around in the courses.) including a dedicated data journalism module.
My take at this stage is that data journalism is worth considering as part of a more structured approach to journalism. The students are no doubt fed up of my Process into content mantra.
Anyway. Two slideshows below are an intro – context lecture and the other is the related workshop. And, yes, I know there is a fair bit of visualization in there – charts and maps – which some data people can get quite sniffy about. We are careful to make the point that not all data is visual but I do think a visual output can be a quick win for capturing peoples interest. It’s just the start.
Again, these are just the slides, there is the usual amount of narrative and discussion that goes with this. They are presented as is:
Let me know what you think if you get a chance.