Reporting data-driven stories means following a process. That’s according to Mike Reilly and Samantha Sunne, authors of Data + Journalism, a book which takes you from A to Z, from acquiring data to scraping, cleaning, analysing, writing and visualising data.
The book also addresses how to share data and build public trust with data, as well as interviews with top data journalists, training videos and hands-on exercises to elevate your data storytelling.
Newsrooms also can benefit from the book. Early and mid-career professionals looking to expand their skills will find the chapters easy to digest and the hands-on exercises practical and applicable to topics journalists cover today.
The book offers insights into data journalism from a global perspective, including datasets and interviews with data journalists from countries around the world. Emphasised by examples drawn from frequently updated sets of open data posted by authoritative sources like the FBI, Eurostat and the US Census Bureau, the authors take a deep dive into data journalism’s “heavy lifting” – searching for, scraping and cleaning data.
Combined with exercises, video training supplements and lists of tools and resources at the end of each chapter, readers will learn not just how to crunch numbers but also how to put a human face to data, resulting in compelling, story-driven news stories based on solid analysis.
The book is also supplemented by a companion website.
Mike Reilley teaches data and digital journalism at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He founded the digital resources site https://www.journaliststoolbox.org in 1996 and continues to update it today for the Society of Professional Journalists.
Samantha Sunne teaches data and digital techniques to journalists at universities and other groups including the Society of Professional Journalists, Hunter College-CUNY and Investigative Reporters and Editors. She is a long-time journalism freelancer specialising in data and investigative stories.