Data Journalism, amazing and emerging new field sits in the front row of data, and is a part of the new culture of going beyond the long narratives and revealing the underlying data in an open, linked and engaging way. With the use of data, number crunching, statistics, charts, graphs or infographics, data journalism seeks to better explain and provide context to a news story.
Newsrooms such as Guardian UK have a dedicated blog focused on using data in a creative way. Other international newspapers are using the best of form of visualisations to interprete data. Examples of the last US elections data which were visualized by over 12 news websites can be seen here.
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In Nigeria, Premium Times did an amazing story which revealed the underlying data on how Nigerian foreign embassies budgets billions for generators. Oluseun Onigbinde in his blog posts on the ScoopNG has also shown the use of simple graphics to drive his point, and thus taking a step further to kick-start Open Data and Data Journalism, Saturday June 29, 2013 at the Co-Creation Hub in Sabo, Yaba this Saturday from 11am.
This event is open to everyone interested in data and willing to start the journey of making something out of it, especially developers who are interested in working with journalists, designers for data visualization, civil society actors, everyday people, and online media/bloggers.
This is a new field that promises excitement, and more information can be found here.