Week eight: Safety in numbers

Crunching numbers is a scary thought for most journalists. We are not typically the data calculating type. We tell our story and find our answers through words and description, both spoken and visual, painting an image through language. Whether it is a hard news story or an elaborate feature, letters, not numbers, lend themselves to us. But in a world of computers where our meticulously thought out words are reduced to mere zeroes and ones, these “numbers” may have a place in journalism after all.

Not everyone has the ability to remember what they read, and of course there’s the skeptics who may not believe everything they read, even when it comes from the trusty mouth of a journalist [not one of those blogger types, but not this blog of course!].  Numbers, i.e. statistics and figures, can really help with this in relation to journalism.  We call this data journalism, and we can discover that it is not necessarily something to be afraid of.

Stats in fact add value to journalistic stories; they even form the basis of financial, political and sport journalism (political polls for example- two party preferred, Tony Abbott down a few points from last week as preferred PM and that kind of stuff). It has the ability to enhance existing stories, or give journalists the ability to take raw data and find a story within it; this is where the true expertise of a journalist comes into play.

Database journalism and the like have the ability to enhance a journalist’s capability to identify and add credibility to news. It can identify social, economic and political trends that impact on society. A great example of database journalism outlined by journalist Kerry Green is that of The Guardian. They took a database containing information about expense claims made by British MPs. They then used a form of crowdsourcing as readers reviewed the data and closely inspected anything suspicious. Combined with the wondrous power of computers, The Guardian was able to source out suspicious information from the raw data and then turn this into a story. This collaborative power along with the concept of data journalism, as Green puts it: enhances the role of journalists as the fourth estate.

This quick audio clip from the ABC explores the secrets hidden in numbers and looks at the scary black hole that is data journalism. 

Displaying data is another skill for journalists. According to Fernanda Viages from IBM, half of our brain is hard wired for vision; we are programmed to understand the world around us in terms of what we see. This is why the visualization of data is important and goes a little further in scope than the humble pie graph. There are many fancy ways to show these stats, with sites like IBM offering professional services to take this data and turn it into something beautiful that our readers can understand.  

So even though we are wordsmiths, figures aren’t necessarily the enemy. We can still play the numbers game.  As journalism scholar Stephen K. Doig explains, while data journalism does require journalists to be comfortable with basic math, the most important skill is the ability to see the possibility of a story.