I think data journalism is a form of visual story telling. If I had to define data journalism, I’d say it is telling a story with visual statistics that relate the story to the reader. Data journalism gives the writer another tool to bring a story to life and it gives the reader a better understanding of how certain things affect them personally. I think data journalism is going to get more popular and rule in the future. There is so much data out there and more being created every day. It’s infinite which means the number of stories that can be written based on data is also infinite.
I don’t think finding and collecting data is everyone’s cup of tea, but I think if someone is really serious about going into journalism, collecting data is an essential thing to learn. There are data experts out there that could be used as resources so I’m sure it’s not impossible to get by without knowing how to collect data, but I think knowing how to collect data independently, even if it’s basic data collecting, would make things go much faster.