The Data Journalism Handbook: How Journalists Can Use Data to Improve the News 1st Edition

I haven't read this whole book yet. Still so much to learn to fully take in the breadth of what is going on in data journalism. But from the little I've had to read, this book contains a lot of rich wisdom for those willing to dig into the material. That being said, this is no manual for learning how to be a data scientist or a programmer. It does impart knowledge on how the technical, raw data should be gathered and used to tell a complete story. As well as when certain elements of data visualization and interactivity were used effectively or not.

Handbook it is!

Occasionally I grab a book that far surpasses my expectations and shifts my perspective of an entire business. This was one of those books... The Data Journalism Handbook, edited by Jonathan Gray, Liliana Bounegru, and Lucy Chambers. As a writer, I was thinking I'd pick up a few points on technical reporting. WRONG! This is about how data is changing the world of journalism in terms of how a story is told and how the reader interacts with it.Contents:Introduction; In The Newsroom; Case Studies; Getting Data; Understanding Data; Delivering DataThe composition of The Data Journalism Handbook is unique, in that over seventy people and organizations contributed the content. These contributions range from ideas on the topic to case studies of stories that successfully combined narrative with data analysis and visualization to involve the reader. Normally, a book written in that fashion is less than satisfactory, as the multiple voices and styles ruin the continuity of the content. Kudos to the editors for not letting that happen here. It's very readable, and that lets the content and value come through.I hadn't heard of data driven journalism prior to reading, and I had my view of journalism shifted significantly. The handbook explains how access to raw data (and the ability to find and format it) provides story ideas as well as becoming part of the story itself. With data visualization tools, data can be put online and allows readers to understand facts in ways that words can't always communicate. Additionally, the readers can use the tools to drill down and display data that's specific to them (data for their neighborhood, city, school, etc.) The journalist works closely with the data technologist to figure out how best to combine narrative and data to report stories at level of detail that wasn't possible even just ten years ago.With the rise of digital media and news reporting, the job and the skill set of a journalist continues to change dramatically. The Data Journalism Handbook does an excellent job in covering one important aspect of that changing environment. I'd consider it required reading for anyone who considers themselves a journalist, as well as anyone who wants to see how their technology skills are being applied in the field of journalism.Disclosure:Obtained From: LibraryPayment: Free

Earlier, I had shared an insight from the Book with you, Here it is: "World has changed, from what's NEW to "what does it all Mean" - This means that Professionals who focus on reporting "what's new" would soon be "out of job". And they should start equip themselves with Analytics skills that helps them uncover insights from all the news around us and help us all make sense of information that's all around us.To that end, The book "Data Journalism" is a great inspiration for Journalist and it seems it's meant to encourage journalist to start embracing the change. It inspires Journalists to think of stories and find data about it. So what's it for Data Geeks? It encourages Data Geeks to help journalists weave story around the data that they found. The book also outlines resources that Data Geeks could use.Now, Two things I really Liked about the book:1. Examples & case-studies, Lots of them! very inspiring!2. I came to know about Tools that I didn't knew about before. I am going to use them!You can read the book online (web version) for free here: [...]

The Data Journalism Handbook is a series of case studies and practices that have employed data to either create or complement existing news stories. Data journalism is a relatively new fork of the journalism field. This book is intended to be a useful resource for those with an interest in data journalism. Defining data journalism can be a bit difficult. One way of looking at it could be the combination of journalism's traditional role of finding and reporting news stories with the added feature of access to a vast array of digital information. Often this digital information consists of facts and or numbers in a raw format. Using existing or custom coded software is required to distill the digital information into a usable form. Working with the data can augment a traditional journalism story or possible give foundations to new stories that would not have been known had the data not been examined in depth. Data journalism can help the journalist tell an interesting story through the use of info-graphics, or it may result in the development of a news app.It has long been said that knowledge is power. Data journalism is a tool that will help the public harness knowledge and hopefully will be empowering to us all. I found this book to be an enjoyable read. It has many links to various on-line examples and does a good job of explaining processes and techniques used by data journalists. I would recommend this book to anyone that has an interest in journalism. In an era when Twitter and Facebook opinion polls dominate local evening newscasts, it is refreshing to see that real journalism is still alive and there are individuals using modern tools to find and present the stories that can impact all of our lives. The book lists case studies of how data has been used both as a tool and as the story itself. Several modern news organizations share their process and team structures with overviews. The book has a good flow, I read it in chapter order and found the material to be both engaging and informative. It is a collaboration from numerous authors and, as such, provides various viewpoints from multiple continents and cultures.Disclosure: I recieved a free e-book copy for review purposes.

Not what I expected. I wanted to use it for my journalism students but discovered it was too complicated to figure out.

That's the book you need as a journalist that wants to introduce yourself into de Data Journalism or if you want to discover succesful examples of use of Data at some newsrooms.

I'd agree with most of the Dillingham review of this book. I'm a mature student and my dissertation is on use of public data. It wasn't a topic I knew much about (I didn't know it was called data journalism, just to begin with). This books gives you a great flavour of the players (governments and publications), the software, the uses of the data. Also good on being skeptical of the data, how to read data, etc. It's all evolving rapidly, so it's just a snapshot, but I found this book awesomely useful in terms of a lot of info in one place. Wish I'd found it earlier. Very useful for anyone looking at structured data that's available to the public. Really wish there was a hard copy edition. I'd buy one of those too.

Very easy and accessible to download and excellently quick which was great because I needed this book for a Data Journalism paper. I was slightly annoyed at myself when I realised you can access most of the chapters online in a pdf format, but that's not to say the Data Journalism Handbook is worth reading and buying.