This post was written for my multimedia reporting class in Tsinghua University.
Let’s be honest, when I first heard that we are going to
have a 10 hour long data journalism workshop in my multimedia reporting class,
I wasn’t really stoked about it. What I had in mind, was that we are all going
to sit in our computers and look at slides on how to create graphs and tables
in Excel. Maybe some of the trainers would even add some correlations and
Pivot-tables. Fun right?
The reality was completely different – after 10 hours of
learning from the best data journalists in the world I felt so motivated and
happy. Because what I didn’t know, is that during these 10 hours they will not
only explain me how to be a better journalist but also show me how to bind
together four different fields that I am really interested in – international
relations/politics, journalism, economy and intelligence analysis. The answer
was investigative data journalism.
I learned that being interested in all of these fields could
actually make you become a better journalist. I learned that a good journalist
shouldn’t only rely on its knowledge on how to collect and present data or rely
on its ability to tell good stories. A good journalist is able to bind them all
together and create stories that are based on real evidence and data, but which
are also personal and make people personally relate to the situation.
In addition to all the things I learned about data
journalism, I also got more motivated to concentrate more of my time on
learning Chinese, because well, one of the journalists Patrick Boehler spoke
fluently 5 languages. I guess I still have some room to improve my skills in
that field!
And overall, I have realized I study in one of the coolest universities in the world!
All the best,
Kai
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