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