Data news is really helpful to readers by sharing some valuable content with you.

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “All Media” (ID:quanmeipai), the author of Tencent Media, authorized to reprint.

How do you define a good data news today in graphical communication? What kind of topic is communicative? What is worth paying attention to in the process of data news production? What is the unique value of data news?

The whole media (ID:quanmeipai) was authorized in this issue. The actual number of recordings can be viewed by the editor-in-chief of Li Wei, the guest of the whole media group. I share her understanding and thinking about data news.

01.Looking at cool data visualization

The Judgement Dimensions of Data News

I think good data news can be judged from the following five dimensions.

First, the amount of transmission.

For the amount of communication, the most important thing is to have a good topic, such as the two topics, the college entrance examination volunteers to fill out such hot topics, the traffic will be very high. Who Runs China, which we worked with CGTN during the two sessions, summed up the data of more than 2,000 NPC deputies and analyzed the characteristics of NPC deputies from the dimensions of gender, education, and province. To dear data: How do I find an interesting world from the data?

This work gives me the biggest impression is that it is very beautiful, the color matching is very suitable, and the interactive experience is also very cool. However, I think that data news is only good-looking and cool. It is not enough for the reader to understand. If you can’t let the reader understand what the data is, you can’t count it as a good data journalism.

For example, the following picture is to use the particle histogram to present the birth year and gender ratio of NPC deputies. From this picture, we can clearly see the increasing trend of female deputies after the 90s. To dear data: How do I find an interesting world from the data?Second, data journalism works not only to be good-looking, but also to make it easy for readers to understand and use charts to convey information. The following websites can help you understand how charts should be used.

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To dear data: How do I find an interesting world from the data?
2. FT Visualization Dictionary
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To dear data: How do I find interesting worlds from the data?  4. junkchartsTo dear data: How do I get from  An interesting world is found in the data?

Good data news should be Intuitive and easy to understand.

Now we can see a lot of “one picture to understand” series of works, but a picture does not mean good data news. These works are mostly combined with words and diagrams. If you remove the text and only look at the chart, you can understand its meaning. I think this is a good data news, otherwise there will be a lot of room for improvement.

To dear data: How do I find an interesting world from the data?

To dear data: How do I find interesting worlds from the data?

Third, the degree of production.

There is a particularly well-known award in the data journal, called the Data Journalism Awards. This award is more sensitive to the quality of the large-scale media production, last year, Caixin won the DJA award. They have a work called “High-speed rail six hours to go, which one do you want to go to?” “, did an interactive news, for example, I am starting from Beijing, where can I take the high-speed rail for 5 hours? This is a topic that everyone likes and hears. Many users are also willing to click and interact. To dear data: How do I find an interesting world from the data?

Fourth, small and beautiful works.

Small and beautiful is some data that is closely related to each of us, such as the length of time you use your mobile app. For example, the iPhone will automatically track the duration of the app’s daily usage, and data news producers can lengthen the timeline to study the user’s mobile phone usage habits. From such data, researchers often find some interesting rules, and it is quite interesting to realize a small reflection on life.

The fifth, short and fast operation.

The interface news has a data column group, which can produce a manuscript almost every day. It can be very powerful. Because data journalism has a big feature that is newsworthy, it needs to be time-sensitive. Timeliness means that everyone will pay more attention to this topic in the short term, and can form a certain degree of discussion and get a higher click.

In addition, share some of the best sources of data journalism. In addition to the DJA just mentioned, there are three more well-known competitions related to data news in the world, namely the beauty of information, SOPA, and SND. In addition to these competitions, there are also some foreign media, such as Bloomberg, The New York Times, and the Guardian. They all have professional data journalists who have done many excellent works.

The domestic financial and new media are also worthy of your attention. In the past year or two, some self-media has also made a lot of good data and news works. In June of this year, the news hosted the “2019 Data Creator Conference”, and many outstanding authors emerged at the conference. Data News 2.0: Change and Unchanged|Data Creator Conference Speech Record 1 This article precipitates many interesting ideas at the conference. .

To dear data: How do I find an interesting world from the data?

Image Source: 澎湃News 2019 Data Creator Conference

02. Topic VS data first

The number of interesting works that can be seen before is usually the first choice, and then to find data based on the topic, such as looking at some industry research reports, consulting experts in a specific field, etc. This mode of operation can collect enough data to complete the work in a short period of time.

I think we can focus more on data first in the future.

For example, if you have a lot of data, use some visualization tools to organize the data into a rough chart, see what kind of rules the data can present, or further explore the stories that can be shared behind the data.

Here, I will share with you the content of the previous lecture by Mr. Huang Chen, the head of the news team of Caixin Data. “Caixin Huangchen:First story or data first? , she also mentioned this issue in sharing, whether it is a story first or a first Data?

In fact, the topic and the data are complementary. Even if we get the data first, the data may be single. We need to find more data sources around this data, so that the content of the data news will be more rich. If the data source is reliable and the data is sufficient, this is a better operational data news topic.

There is a small problem, that is, what kind of topic is more suitable for making data news. The NPC has a public number called RUC News Square, which summarizes some of the award-winning works of the international data journalism competition from 2012 to 2017, and found some rules from the subject matter of the report. Political topics, public services, medical care, war, crime, population, environment, etc. These topics are relatively easy to win. To dear data: How do I find an interesting world from the data?

Image Source: RUC News Square

We will bring our vision back to China, and we will find that the topic of domestic data news is mainly focused on topics related to business and urban planning. For example, real estate, subway transportation, etc., like environmental and education, are also related topics. To dear data: How do I find an interesting world from the data?

Image Source: 澎湃News 2019 Data Creator Conference

There is one more point to emphasize here. When we use data, it is important to indicate the source of the data. This can not only increase the authority of the report, but also facilitate the exchanges between the peers.

03.Write a copy, do design, knock code

18 martial arts of data journalists

We often say that we are doing a versatileData journalists need three areas of competence: writing, designing, and writing code.

A good data news product requires the cooperation of these three aspects of talent. News editors need to know what they are good at. They are more capable of copywriting, and they are good at digging holes. Or is it a good design and a strong visual expression? It is necessary to combine the strengths of the areas that they are good at. To dear data: How do I find an interesting world from the data?

Image Source: Getting Started with Huang Zhimin Data News

In my own case, I will be more responsible for data analysis or data source work outside of data presentation.

First, find the right data and express it.

Because in practice, finding data is a very time consuming task and you need to build a search mind. Asking experts and scholars or finding papers is an important channel. Sometimes the paper mentions very helpful data sources or databases. Standing on the shoulders of others can help us save a lot of effort to find data.

Secondly, understand the data and try to find interesting conclusions.

The understanding and expression of data content is a test of whether practitioners can dig interesting conclusions from the data. For example, use the data as the interviewee, torture the data, make some assumptions about the data and then verify it to see if the data can give you the answer. This is actually a very serious exercise for practitioners who have just entered the industry. This requires you to plow some vertical areas.

Third, clear and visual design.

The key to judging the visual design is whether your icon can be clearly expressed after the text is removed. Data news is not only good-looking, but it is the key to making readers understand. It is most appropriate for the editor to consider what kind of icon to use to present the data.

I summarize the tips for doing data news as four points: torture your data; quickly complete the ability; find a wide range of topics; master data analysis techniques.

In the process of finding interesting conclusions, we will be more likely to observe the outliers of some data. For example, we have done a questionnaire and found that people with higher incomes are more confident about their own values, but this conclusion is Unexpectedly, how can we find interesting points? We will split this data into two genders, and find that men are more confident in self-worth when they have higher incomes, but women may show a wave of rising and falling trends.

Quick completion of oneThe content of the topic is also very important, because the news is time-sensitive, the reader will not give the news producer too long attention, we need to make a choice of important and minor content within the specified time to complete a complete article . It takes a long time to complete a work in two to three days.

In addition, we will try to find a topic with rich data. For example, we have done the data of the Beijing subway before. We found that the official Weibo of the Beijing Subway will release the fault data of each subway. So we collected the data and made a work about the Beijing subway avoidance guide. Finally, we received the data. A good response.

Based on the award-winning work of previous data news, it is not difficult to find that most of these works use relatively simple data analysis ideas, such as comparing average, maximum, minimum, variance, comparing data from different years, and so on. Therefore, the data analysis techniques we often use are very basic, and we have already learned it in our primary and secondary schools.

04.The unique value of data news

The unique value of data journalism, I think it can be summarized in three points.

The first is to reduce the burden on the reader, because people read the picture about 100 times faster than reading the text. Data news through the editor’s understanding of the data and then refined the main points, and finally produced the information chart, is able to truly achieve a picture to read a lot of information. To dear data: How do I find an interesting world from the data? Second, data journalism is the process by which editors communicate what they find interesting to their audience. For example, designers Giorgia and Stefanie have done a data visualization project called dear-data. The project lasted for more than a year, and two people in two different countries sent some interesting data from their lives to the other party in the form of hand-painted postcards. This small project is very interesting and impressive enough to win the Gold Award for Data Visualization Project in 2015. To dear data: How do I find an interesting world from the data?

Finally, I feel that data journalism is really helping people share some valuable content and it is helpful to readers.

For example, the college entrance examination season, on the B stationThere is an UP master who compiled the data of the 2017 national colleges and universities into an interactive webpage, including the rankings of 985 and 211 colleges and universities, and the dominant disciplines. I think this work can help the candidates to choose schools, choose majors, etc. The only thing that can be optimized is that it is better to add a score match or a college recommendation. It can be said to be a school selection artifact. To dear data: How do I find an interesting world from the data?

Note: The lecture sharing time is June 19, 2019