Best practice examples of data journalism and visualization projects | Hacker News Reader

Best practice examples of data journalism and visualization projects

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214 pointschrtze10 comments

I think the idea of having some examples of relevant, high quality, punchy data journalism is great. Such examples are few and far between. Unfortunately, what I clicked on looked, to me, pretty disappointing (journalism, not software). Example: looking at their top link

http://projects.aljazeera.com/2013/syrias-refugees/

It took me a while to figure out what exactly are they showing: the plots/colors look good, the software works cool, but it took me a couple of minutes to figure out what this is a plot of (area, at population density at your chosen location, needed to house X million people).

Maybe all they need are better titles / verbal descriptions, but as is it does not cut it for me as best practices of data journalism (interesting, correct, clear, grabs me by the balls). My 2c.

Perhaps you can help in discerning what is and isn't journalism since they stated that contributors are welcome. That first link turned me off as well.

An interactive visualization like this could help drive the point home https://www.sizzleanalytics.com/Boards/sizzle/Spotify-Top-Tr...

Personally, I'm partial to: http://conceptviz.github.io/

edit: this is more about visual explanations, but I think a lot of ideas are transferable and go hand in hand

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/reddit-ngram/?keyword=em...

In which fivethirtyeight demonstrates Reddit's move towards a more diverse user base.

http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeo... was a great resource back in the day.

Neat examples. Still a dearth in statistical aptitude to cross before "data driven" journalism becomes more than nieche market or circus, but every step counts.

That's a No True Scotsman way of looking at it. Data journalism is about making a justifiable, persuasive argument with evidence, and for some arguments you don't need p-values everywhere.

Granted, some news sources tend to use data journalism as a linkbait strategy ("In One Chart!") to make arguments which are hard to impeach, which is a separate issue.

I didn't mean it in terms of p values. Just an ability to reason from data. Statistics is not statistical inference. What does the graph actually show? Is it confounded? How was the data collected?

Everyone likes a bit of graph porn because it's associated to rigour. But clothing not maketh the man and all that.

Data journalism is such a broad umbrella that it's hard to agree how mainstream or niche it is. I think David Leonhardt (former editor of the NYT's Upshot) had it absolutely right [0] when he said "data journalism" is as dumb and meaningless a phrase as "word journalism". Though perhaps the fact that journalists are OK with calling it "data journalism" as a means to differentiate it from whatever normal journalism is, is a testament to how niche the concept of using data is in journalism.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/20/upshot/death-to-data-journ...

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