Book Review: Data Journalism: Mapping the Future, edited by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble

Abstract

Data Journalism: Mapping the Future. Edited by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble. Bury St Edmunds, UK: Abramis Academic Publishing, 2013. 187 pp. $26.50 pbk. £15.95 pbk.With vast amounts of now openly accessible online, and the new infographic technologies available to visualize data, news media are increasingly making use of these valuable mines of to source and produce their stories. Data journalism-the use of numerical in the production and distribution of news-is an emerging subarea in our field but so far little has been written about it. Scholarly narratives on are still rare, not to mention published books devoted to this subject. The January 2014 release of Data Journalism: Mapping the future is a welcome addition to this nascent body of literature, after the seminal Data Journalism Handbook (2012).Defining data journalism is not an easy task, given its confusion, or overlap at least, with digital computer-assisted-reporting (CAR), investigative and so on. The book sets out with its first section, What precisely is to track the philosophical and conceptual foundation for as a stand-alone subject area. This collection of essays from four academics and industry experts certainly answers more questions than it raises. One may walk away with a bio-like understanding of the identity: evolved from precision (which Phil Meyer has advocated since 1970s), and is a development of CAR in the online context; it combines reporting with programming of data; its features may include interactivity, statistics, a multimodular approach, and audience participation. Despite this wealth of information, the book asks questions that remain unanswered-Is it realistic to expect journalists to be programmers? Should all reporters be required to be literate? Is good for the general public audience or for the elite audience only?As mentioned in the book, the notion of journo-coder, programmer-journalist, hacker-journalist, or journo-programmer is still novel and the terminology is as yet undecided. When reporting meets programming, the many myths this marriage has generated are always debatable, but that does not stop from growing. Section 2 of the book is particularly informative (and most valuable of all, in my opinion) with the tips on developing and updating skills given by mediaindustry specialists such as Jacqui Taylor, Daniel Ionescu, and Pupul Chatterjee. From here, one gets a big picture of the state of in practice-how are accessed, obtained; how they are processed and presented using ever-updating tools such as Excel, Tabula, Tableau, Import.io, Google Charts, D3, infogr.am, Datawrapper, Many Eyes, Easel.ly, and so on.A great strength of this book is its recency. Not only does it introduce the most updated technologies needed for (like the aforementioned), but it also includes some very recent news events as examples to illustrate their implications for journalism, such as the Snowden leaks, and the offshore banking leaks involving the secret British Virgin Islands-based businesses of the rich and famous around the world. …