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An emerging trend in journalism is data journalism, finding, summarizing and finding meaning in data then presenting the findings in an understandable form to the reader.
Many universites are are including data journalism as part of their media corses. That includes UTS and Columbia to name a few.
A central concept is to use graphics and tables to present data and to gain insights into the data.
Data journalism is not new. In the 19th century in London, a map of the Thames River was overlaid with the incidents of deaths due to diseases associated with living near sewage treatment plants. The victims were drawing water to drink near the sewage works.
Even as a student at Macquarie in the 1980s, the Student Union published an article on the forthcoming Student Union elections.
In the article there was a graphic of the "groups" and their inter-relationships with other groups.
It was a revelation to find that when tracing the arrows in the diagram, many of the groups were fronts for the Labor and Liberal party.
I don't recall the exact names. The names were different than the source party. Suppose one group was called "Students for education" and another group was called "NASA" which stood for "No A%#*hole Students Allowed".
The diagram in that student paper was a revelation that many political groups running in the Macquarie Student's Union were fronts for mainstream political parties.
A graphic does paint a thousand words.
How does data reporting translate to stories and items on radio?
By making a verbal summary of the data.
For more complex insights requires more elaborate discussion on a spoken-word program, which cannot be summarised in a news bulletin.
Data journalism is not new. It certainly does not have the immediacy of reporting from Parliament, news conferences and chasing emergency vehicles.
But with software and graphics, a great deal of insights from the data can be had.
Thank you
Anthony, Strathfield South, in the land of the Wangal and Darug Peoples of the Eora Nation