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