Between the Spreadsheets

Numbers have always informed reporting. But in the last couple of years, the appetite for big data, coupled with a willingness to experiment with how to present this information, has led to an eruption of visualized narratives and rich data explorations.

Advances in multimedia have given rise to new opportunities for displaying these pieces, especially online. As a consequence, media organizations are growing their interactive departments, and journalism schools are adapting curricula to incorporate computer science courses. Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, for example, is now in its second year of offering a dual degree in computer science and journalism. If sports are a statistician’s dirtiest fantasy, then the Olympics are the ultimate playing ground for the datarazzi. Among the bickering and backbiting about logistics, budget, organization, and badminton, London 2012 has had another impact: giving news outlets their own podium from which to showcase excellent examples of data journalism.