For journalists who want to remain relevant in the profession and be in-demand, there are two skills they have to learn and master. This include how to use data to report stories and coding.
New media experts gave the advice at Brazil’s 12th Congress of Investigative Journalism according to a report on various sessions by Jéssica Cruz published by www.ijnet.org
“Even in countries where it’s hard to get decent data, there are people exploring, finding something,” explained Simon Rogers, the data editor at Google. “Every government in the world has data, even Afghanistan.”
Marco Túlio Pires, the Google News Lab lead for Brazil and Latin America, said that journalists have a responsibility to explore open source databases, seeking stories that otherwise wouldn’t be evident, while also pressuring the government to make more data available online.
“We are not expecting that any regular citizen will dig into these databases, but journalists are being paid for it,” he said. “As journalists we cannot give up, we have to push and push the government to release [datasets]. That is our job, right?”
Pires recommended that those interested in getting started with data journalism should take online courses in order to learn the basics. Organizations like Internews in Africa and Asia, School of Data, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, Hong Kong University and many others in the Middle East can be helpful starting points for finding these courses.
