![]() ![]() It will challenge them to improve their understanding of numbers and quantification, as well as offer tools and frameworks for presenting data to audiences. This course will acquaint students with the basics of cleaning, analyzing and interpreting information in tabular form – rows and columns. Demonstrate a solid grasp of data storytelling techniques that can help broad audiences understand data.Deploy basic software and applications of various kinds to analyze and visualize data in creative ways.Use and manipulate datasets with ease and comfort, being able to ask interesting questions and explore various angles.Assess how institutions may be collecting and using data and the implications of these processes for the public.Think critically and deeply about the limitations of datasets and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of data. ![]() For those interested in the evolution of this field, see Mark Coddington’s study “Clarifying Journalism’s Quantitative Turn,” Digital Journalism, 2015. The American Press Institute has also published a series of articles describing how data journalism could be integrated into curricula.Ī 2017 study based on data collected through Harvard’s Journalist’s Resource project, “Knowing the Numbers,” offers an overview of the debates in the media industry and academia over journalists’ proverbial “math phobia” as well as its consequences and what can be done about it. There is simply no way journalists can perform their watchdog functions if they do not have baseline skills and knowledge to interrogate the activities of these agencies.įor journalism schools and faculty looking for wider recommendations and ideas about how to incorporate data-related skills and knowledge into the curriculum, the 2016 Knight Foundation-Columbia Journalism School report “Teaching Data and Computational Journalism,” by Charles Berrett and Cheryl Phillips, offers a comprehensive overview of the field, based on a survey of 113 schools. Nearly all of the powerful institutions in society – from government agencies to businesses, sports franchises to insurance firms – are heavily invested in collecting and leveraging data. A structural shift in how information is being produced, used, and, at times, misused, dictates a shift in how journalists prepare for the profession. While this area of journalism has long been considered an important subfield in newsrooms and journalism schools, societal and industry changes now demand that the basic skills needed to work with data become, in effect, ubiquitous and mainstream among reporters, editors and instructors. This syllabus is informed by the idea that data journalism is practiced in its highest form not when it is just involved in creating dazzling graphics, but when its methods are used to investigate wrongdoing, hold the powerful accountable and spotlight public policy failings.Ĭomputer-assisted reporting, or CAR, has been around for decades. Over all, issues of data ethics and valid interpretation are front and center here. This syllabus covers these core skills while also giving students some familiarity with relevant software, statistical and visualization techniques and programming. And the core skills of working with numbers and telling stories in the public interest are fundamental to all newsroom work. Still, it is important for all team members to have some familiarity with what the others are doing. In most moderate to large newsrooms, some data tasks are divided among desks and departments, with reporters, editors, designers and coders working in teams. The skills required to be a successful data journalist are many, ranging from numeracy and spreadsheet fluency to being able to create visualizations and interpret and perform statistical analyses. ![]()
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