
Journalism must keep pace with open data movement, warns City academic
Tom Felle is launching a new book, Data Journalism: Inside the global future
Journalists who want to investigate future
Volkswagen-type scandals must be data literate or face obscurity, according to City
University London journalism academic Tom Felle.
The Lecturer, co-editor of a new book examining
global data journalism trends, believes that data journalism is now the in-demand skillset for anyone who
wants to work as an investigative reporter.
Newsrooms without data journalists will not be
able to function, he cautioned. But skills training and access to datasets
remains problematic, and while commitments by national governments to open data
are laudable, the reality is many data publication schemes are not up to date.
He said: “As more and more data is published in digital
form, the news media needs to invest in digital re-training of its staff.
Stories that cannot be found by any other means are now being found in data.
“It’s
a new frontier for many newsrooms, but not without its own teething pains. Chief among them is
access to datasets. The pan-national Open Government Partnership commits the UK
and other international governments to publishing data, but many are lagging
well behind.”
City University
London will host a free public panel debate on global issues
impacting on data journalism on Wednesday
4th November. The event takes place in the Department of
Journalism at 6.30pm.
Click here to register for the event
Tom Felle is a Lecturer in the Department of Journalism at City
University London and the co-editor of Data
Journalism: Inside the global future (with former BBC journalist and
academic John Mair and Damian Radcliffe, Carolyn
S Chambers Professor in Journalism at the University of Oregon.
Contributors include: Simon Rogers, Data
Editor at Google; Nick Phipps, an
editor at Sky News; Helena Bengtsson, Editor, Data Projects at the
Guardian; Megan Lucero, Data Journalism
Editor at The Times and The Sunday
Times; and Steve Doig, Knight
Chair in Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass
Communication, Arizona State University.
The book features 30 chapters
from journalists, developers and academics on both sides of the Atlantic and further afield. It is
published by Abramis UK, priced £19.95.
This book launch on Wednesday 4th November is co-hosted by City University London and The Media Society.