May 24, 2012

Guardian
Simon Rogers is testing a new metaphor: Data journalism is like punk music — anyone can do it. Punk music signified a “DIY ethos,” he writes, “encouraging kids in the suburbs to take up instruments, with little or no musical training.” The instructions for creating punk music were simple: “This is a chord … this is another … this is a third. NOW FORM A BAND.” Using that model, Rogers writes:

Would this work?

1) This is a dataset

2) Here’s another

3) Here are some free tools

NOW BE A DATA JOURNALIST

Read on for the discussion that ensues.

Related: Book review: The Data Journalism Handbook (Scientific American) | When big data is bad data (CJR) | MinnPost tracks legislation with Bill Explorer (Nieman Lab) || Earlier: How to get started in data journalism (Poynter) | Word clouds don’t count as data journalism (Poynter)

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Jeff Sonderman (jsonderman@poynter.org) is the Digital Media Fellow at The Poynter Institute. He focuses on innovations and strategies for mobile platforms and social media in…
Jeff Sonderman

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