The Data Journalism Handbook [Formato Kindle]

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 Data

The 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: Library
Payment: Free

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.

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: [...]