Latest News → MediaWire

Simon Rogers: ‘Data journalism is the new punk’

avatar by Published May 24, 2012 11:10 am

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)

Tags:

We have made it easy to comment on posts, however we require civility and encourage full names to that end (first initial, last name is OK). Please read our guidelines here before commenting.

  • Anonymous

    I feel this is happening across a few different aspects.  I see it with data journalism and with writing in general.  We’ve hired people who tout themselves as expert writers at my company, qualifiedimpressions.com only to quickly realize their skills are not what they claim them to be.  It seems anyone who can string together a sentence can call themselves a writer.  Hopefully you will not see the same trend.

  • Anonymous

    I feel this is happening across a few different aspects.  I see it with data journalism and with writing in general.  We’ve hired people who tout themselves as expert writers at my company, qualifiedimpressions.com only to quickly realize their skills are not what they claim them to be.  It seems anyone who can string together a sentence can call themselves a writer.  Hopefully you will not see the same trend.

  • Alfred Ingram

    You can offer your guests flour, yeast and water,  point out directions to a stove or offer them bread. People want information. Data is just an ingredient.