In 2019, it will be 10 years since the launch of the Guardian Datablog, when my own particular journey into data journalism began. In the last decade, governments around the world have opened up their data, through official sites such as data.gov. Sophisticated data visualization and analysis tools such as OpenRefine and Flourish became freely available as the field went from niche to mainstream. Journalists, generally comfortable dealing in the economy of words, now appear finally to have thrown aside their fear of math and numbers.
What is new is how widespread this has become. Data journalism now belongs to the whole world — and 2019 will see that expand to the point that it will become a truly global field of work, with some newsrooms and journalists pushing the boundaries in using data to tell compelling stories.
As director of the Data Journalism Awards, I saw a record number of entries in 2018 — nearly 700 — from 57 countries, and half from small newsrooms. There were entries from India, Cuba, and the Philippines. We saw pieces that were at the edge of newsroom innovation. The winning project from a large data journalism team was Caixin in China, for instance, which has become a global leader in the field through its innovative visualizations — such as this beautiful project on high-speed rail in China.
Another example is Yudivián Almeida of Postdata.club in Cuba, who was mentioned for his “great cross-border data journalism” and his work reporting on the elections in Cuba.
Data journalism has always been about collaborating, sharing and spreading the knowledge amongst the community. This work doesn’t live in a silo — now we can learn from what these new outlets and reporters have done to teach the rest of the world. The new Data Journalism Handbook, published in its first edition since 2012 this month, reflects this new world — with chapters from authors writing about the rise of data journalism in China; how to report on social media data and how to practice the field in the Caribbean.
In 2019, data journalism will go beyond the mainstream to be a part of how journalism works everywhere.
Simon Rogers is data editor at the Google News Lab and director of the Data Journalism Awards.
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign