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