The Data Journalism Handbook is Finally Here!

The day has finally come to unveil the first version of the Data Journalism Hanbdook. Six months after the initial idea was born at the 2011 Mozzilla Festival in London, the handbook is finally online, although “corrections will be made in the next days and additional material included”, as editor and EJC coordinator for the data journalism project Liliana Bounegru pointed out at the presentation.

The handbook is a team work and a collaborative project: coordinators Lucy Chambers, of the Open Knowledge Foundation, and Liliana Bounegru said they only covered a connecting role to “facilitate the dialogue and work of the community members that contributed to the handbook”.

“The book is about why you should care about data journalism. Feedback is welcome and invited and we we hope you will like it”, said Chambers.

The content of the book, which is now available online for free and will later be released both as an ebook and in print version by O’Reilly Media, was displayed by a poster designed by infographics designer Lulu Pinney.

The data journalism workflow visualised by Lulu Pinney

The handbook opens with an explanation of what data journalism is to “inspire you to work in this field. The second part presents the method and process step by step, from scraping, to making FOI requests and the role of  crowdsourcing” commented Liliana Bounegru. “The book then continues with sections on how to make sense of your data, how to get stories from data, an overview of data journalists’ favourite tools and case studies”.

The final chapters are dedicated to the delicate steps covering how to deliver  stories and data to the public and how to engage communities.

Mirko Lorenz of Deutsche Welle congratulated the editors, including Jonathan Stray who unfortunately could not attend the Perugia session but whose contribution was crucial for the success of the handbook, and all contributors for the “really marvelous work”, and said he was very happy to see how many media companies got involved in the project.

Editors Liliana Bounegru and Lucy Chambers introducing the Data Journalism Handbook

Guido Romeo of Wired Italia informed the audience that the first chapter of the handbook has already been translated into Italian and that contributions to finish the translation are welcome.

As Aron Pilhofer, interactives editor at the New York Times, said: “There is no lack of tools or training material out there to get you started” and the handbook is the perfect resource for aspiring data journalists.

Claudia Costa