Greetings from the other side (of the screen)! My name is Melanie Morales and I’m in my first year of graduate school. I received my undergraduate degree from the great Texas State in 2010 and now I’m back for more. I actually came to Texas State as an interested journalism major and soon switched to Public Relations where I received my degree. It’s interesting to see how much has changed since then but it’s not that surprising. Digital media has been evolving rapidly in the last few years and data journalism seems to be the next big “thing.”
I honestly didn’t think about data journalism and what it was until the readings. I would read articles that clearly had data presented in a visual way, but never thought of it as a way of storytelling. i was just glad they gave me a picture to look at, because as the readings suggested, it brings the story to life, allows readers to relate to it and makes the information more digestible. So, yes, I’m all for that! I think ideas for this topic are limitless (well, depending on the data), but overall, some pretty insightful correlations can be brought to light. If you know me or if you were my classmate last semester in the Web Design class, you might know that a lot of my topics related to my church. So Christianity for me is not only me choosing to dedicate my life to Jesus, but it also a controversial topic in many countries. I’d like to see a data set bring some of the questions, beliefs, lifestyles, stereotypes or any other topic surrounding the religion to life.
If I gave you an honest answer of what data journalism was, I would say “cool pictures with some text.” Obviously, I’m not fleshing out the importance of what journalism is so I would then redefine it as “a skill-set used by journalists or journalist-type professionals to convey important data – that is too large to understand and would get “lost” in plain text – in a meaningful and visual (and possibly, interactive) way.”
I probably have a more pessimistic outlook of data journalism (I think that’s the hard technology determinist in me), but I see it becoming the norm of telling a story, rather than a supplement or something that you see every now and then. With more people spending less time reading and more time typing or talking to their phone to type, I think it will gradually evolve into how we digest the front page news. WHO KNOWS?! Again, I’m just very satisfied with the visual and useful information it does provide. Who doesn’t like pictures when the flip through a book? Same concept, right?