Jessica Li & Raeedah Wahid—Outlier 2021—Shaping Dataviz Through Student Newsrooms

Shaping Dataviz Through Student Newsrooms In the past year, data has become more important than ever and journalism, a powerful platform through which dataviz practitioners can present its significance. Besides national publications—The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, and more—student newsrooms are also shifting focus to well-reported, data-driven stories. They are particularly powerful in their ability to experiment with journalism and create new definitions for it. Two years ago, the Columbia Daily Spectator’s “dataviz desk” accessorized stories with pretty bar charts. Today, it stands as a reporting section—leveraging tools for improved storytelling and pushing the limits of what powerful (and delicate) stories data can tell. Student newsrooms, once empowered toward data-driven stories, not only improve reader engagement, but also contribute to wider communities by creating localized data. In addition, students are uniquely positioned to experiment and explore various visual forms and stories. This experimentation can shift the trajectory of professional newsrooms, as well as inspire other data-oriented stories and applications. This talk is for everyone: student journalists and dataviz professionals alike! Join us as we walk through stories published by the Spectator Graphics team which are inspired by industry practice and have inspired national papers. Through topics like officer misconduct, food insecurity, COVID-19 college shutdowns, and more, learn how datasets can be applied and understood through journalism in order to reach larger groups without compromising creativity, empathy, and clarity.