The Data Journalism Podcast

Jen Christiansen is the author of Building Science Graphics (published by A K Peters/CRC Press) and a senior graphics editor at Scientific American. In this episode of the pod, she talks about her approach to visualising scientific stories and to graphics, based on her long career in the field. "For any scientist to  have their work in the lab or in the field and be worthwhile, you need to communicate it to someone - whether you're communicating it to your peers or to the broader public or to funders ... And I think that most training has been focused on making sure people can write, but we don't have a lot of training for everyone in terms of design fundamentals and different languages you can use that are pictorial to help get your point across and to help people have greater understanding of what it is that you're doing." The music this week, made with TwoTone, is Radio Observations of the Pulse Profiles and Dispersion Measures of Twelve Pulsars from this dataset, supplied to us by Jen.

Harry Enten (@forecasterenten on Twitter) is one of the most-high-profile data journalists in the world. He explains the numbers every day on CNN - whether it's election polling, sports or even his original passion: meterology, specifically snowstorms. "I definitely see myself as a storyteller," says Enten and he chats with Alberto and Simon about his approach to making the numbers understandable for a TV audience, which charts work (and which don't), as well as who is in his head each time he presents.  They also discuss polling and how to report on the nuances of surveys. "I wonder about what's the best way to present uncertainty all the time." "I understand the data better than the audience does because I sit with the data for such a long period of time," he says. "And I almost have to step back and be like, okay, if I didn't know this topic, if let's say this is about people's favorite soups or something to do with cooking that I don't understand at all, what can I take away from this graphic? Would I really be able to understand it?" The music this week, made with TwoTone, is based on snowfall in Central Park from 1869 from this dataset, via weather.gov.

Nigel Holmes is a graphic designer, author, and theorist, who focuses on information graphics and information design. He's also the author of a new book, Joyful Infographics, a personal journey through visual design. Alberto and Simon chat with Nigel about why humanity and fun is so vital in graphics. The music this week, made with TwoTone, is is based on honey production in the US, from 1998 to 2012.

Nathan Yau is behind one of the world's most influential data journalism and visualisation websites: Flowing Data. A statistician, Nathan started the site as a resource for students but it has become a go-to destination to find out the latest in data journalism. We discuss why dataviz matters, how to learn R and the quiz of the week. The music this week, made with TwoTone, is the percentage of people sleeping on a weekday in 30-minute intervals, based on the American Time Use Survey 2020

Amanda Cox is Head of Special Data Projects at USAFacts, an unrivaled source of public data in the US. She's also an established data journalist and former editor of the NYT's Upshot data journalism section. As the winner of multiple awards, she's been referred to as the "Michael Phelps of infographics". She chats with Simon and Alberto about her career, how she feels about treemaps and how to put data out into the world. The music this week, made with TwoTone, is the S&P 500 index over time.

The Axios team have spearheaded 'smart brevity', but how does that apply to data journalism and data visualisation? Alberto and Simon chat with the team that makes it happen: Danielle Alberti, Jacque Schrag and Will Chase about how they work and what makes a project 'Axios'.  You can check out the midterms project the team worked on with Google Trends data here.  Here are some more projects mentioned in the episode: Variants tracker 1 million deaths Poll worker map Pie swarm The music for this episode is based on Axios data visual requests, compiled by the team. It was built with TwoTone, a tool that turns data into music.

Archie Tse is the Graphics Director at The New York Times. He has been at The Times since 1995, and he has pioneered graphics reporting, often in person - especially after 9/11, traveling to Iraq to cover the US invasion, and reporting on the capture of Saddam Hussein. He is even credited by some with being an early adopter of identifying Republicans with the colour red and Democrats with the colour blue after his election 2000 maps. Alberto and Simon discuss how his team works, his approach to data visualisation and journalism - and whether he prefers tree maps or pie charts.  The music is created with TwoTone and is based on US honey production data.

One of the most successful published data journalists in the world today, David McCandless has a new book out: Beautiful News. His work is innovative, newsy, current and incredibly popular with readers — but sometimes controversial with what he calls the "chart police".  Alberto and Simon chat with David about why he gets such Marmite-type reactions to his work, how Hans Rosling opened our eyes to the power of data visualisation and the nature of beauty. The music for today's episode is world GDP, made with TwoTone, which turns numbers into tunes.

Election reporting has become one of the most important journalism beats in America as we barrel towards the midterm elections. How can data journalism help? Jessica Huseman has become the face of election reporting in America. Editorial Director at Votebeat, she also owns the data journalism training organistion Friendly State News and previously worked at ProPublica on the Electionland project. Jessica chats with Alberto and Simon about the stakes in election reporting this cycle - and how data makes everything better. The music this episode is made with made with TwoTone and is the sound of Midterm election turnouts from 1790 to 2018. 

Anatoliy Bondarenko is Data editor at Texty.org.ua, an award-winning news and data site in Ukraine, from where he joins Alberto and Simon to discuss his life in a war zone as a data journalist. His team's work to analyse misinformation has won a Sigma data journalism award for best News Application and they are still producing great data journalism today, even as the country is under attack.  Some of his team's pieces include this analysis of satellite images of Russian military bases, an investigation into illegal amber mining in Ukraine  and this interactive on corruption.