ProjetJ.ca. ShareThis Collaboration spéciale de Geneviève Gagné au Festival International du Journalisme à Pérouse en Italie À deux jours du vote, les candidats aux élections fédérales exécutent leur dernier sprint en répétant pour la énième fois leur liste de promesses remplies de statistiques et de pourcentages.
Des chiffres que les journalistes doivent traduire à l’ensemble de la population. «Si les reporters n’utilisent pas les statistiques comme il faut, cela veut dire que les politiciens peuvent faire ce qu’ils veulent avec ces chiffres», explique le professeur Stephen Doig à l’occasion du Festival International du Journalisme, qui avait lieu à Pérouse en Italie. Le journalisme de précision, ou journalisme de données, est une des méthodes pour interpréter ces données. Comment ça marche? Stephen Doig, qui travaillait à l’époque pour le Miami Herald, avait alors recueilli un à un les bulletins de votes considérés comme non valides dans l'État de la Floride. Allergiques aux chiffres Voir aussi: Les bases de données relationnelles. Base_tutorial. Data journalism: How to do it. Think of what you do in more traditional practises of the craft You gather information, you sift it, pick out the significant and interesting bits, and present it to the audience in as interesting way as you can.
In short, you gather raw information, process it, and shape it. You do exactly the same when data is your source material, rather than a collection of quotes, documents and events. Mirko Lorenz, quoted in Data-driven Journalism, says: “Data driven journalism can be viewed as a process of refinement, where raw data is transformed into something meaningful…complex facts are boiled down into a clear story that people can easily understand and remember.”
But we mustn’t get caught up on data for data’s sake. Mirko gives the example of a New York Times app called Rent or Buy? With it, a reader can fill in a few details and get a definitive answer – tailored to their specific circumstances, on whether they are better of buying or renting a home. So how do we do data journalism? 1. 2. 3. How The Guardian is pioneering data journalism with free tools. The Guardian takes data journalism seriously. They obtain, format, and publish journalistically interesting data sets on their Data Blog, they track transparency initiatives in their searchable index of world government data, and they do original research on data they’ve obtained, such as their amazing in-depth analysis of 90,000 leaked Afghanistan war documents.
And they do most of this with simple, free tools. Data Blog editor Simon Rogers gave me an action-packed interview in The Guardian’s London newsroom, starting with story walkthroughs and ending with a philosophical discussion about the changing role of data in journalism. It’s a must-watch if you’re wondering what the digitization of the world’s facts means for a newsroom. Here’s my take on the highlights; a full transcript is below. The technology involved is surprisingly simple, and mostly free. Data Blog posts are often related to or supporting of news stories, but not always.