A partial, curated list of publicly available, free/open source and open access resources for learning and doing data journalism.
This repository builds on lists and collections of resources from the first and second editions of the open access Data Journalism Handbook and ongoing research on data journalism practices.
It is used and updated as part of open educational resources for the data journalism MA module at King's College London.
Suggestions for open access resources or links to add are most welcome. The repository for this page is here.
- Data journalism learning
- Data journalism updates
- Data journalism practices
- Data journalism awards, prizes and grants
- Data journalism examples
- Further resources
Note: this list focuses on those which are free/open access. There are many wonderful non-free/non-open access books about data journalism (e.g. see here for more).
- Data Journalism Handbook: Towards a Critical Data Practice (second edition, 2021, also available here and here) - "a diverse collection of perspectives on how data journalism is done around the world and the broader consequences of datafication in the news, serving as both a textbook and a sourcebook for this emerging field". Translations and associated resources available here.
- The Curious Journalist’s Guide to Data (2016) - "a book about the principles behind data journalism"
- Data Journalism Handbook (first edition, 2012) - "how journalists can use data to improve the news". Translations available in Arabic, Azerbaijani, Chinese, French, Greek, Japanese, Spanish and Ukrainian.
- Data journalism research - open access bibliography on Zotero
Further tool-specific tutorials are listed below in the working with data section.
- Doing Journalism with Data: First Steps, Skills and Tools and other courses from datajournalism.com
- Data Journalism and Visualization with Free Tools - Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas
- Digital investigations for journalists: How to follow the digital trail of people and entities -
- How We Helped Our Reporters Learn to Love Spreadsheets - New York Times
- Continue, pivot or put down - "The Pudding’s process to go from idea to data story"
- Freely accessible materials from ProPublica's Data Institute – 2022, 2021, 2019, 2018
- datajourn.com - "learn how to find data, extract stories from data, and package data in visual and interactive ways", from Dylan Freedman at the Washington Post
- Data Journalism University Courses and Programmes
- Computer-Assisted Reporting and Data Journalism Syllabuses
- #ddj hashtag - e.g. on twitter and mastodon
- dataninja - Italy
- European Data Journalism Network
- Hacks/Hackers
- journocoders - London, UK
- News nerdery - "international meta organization to foster news nerd collaboration and knowledge sharing"
- NICAR - "a forum for the discussion of subjects related to data journalism"
- OpenNews
- School of Data
- datajournalism.com
- Top 10 in Data Journalism from Eunice Au at the Global Investigative Journalism Network
- ddj.news - "weekly newsletter featuring the best of the web for data journalists" from Winny de Jong
- Online journalism blog
- Digital Investigations - newsletter with tips, techniques and links
- Dataharvest
- International Journalism Festival
- Global Investigative Journalism Conference
- NICAR
- Coda.Br
- Data Feminism (2020) - "a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics that is informed by the ideas of intersectional feminism". See also article and poster on data femininsm principles.
- Responsibledata.io - "leading the way from best intentions to best practice"
- Towards a less harmful data practice - DataMade
Datasets
- data is plural - "a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets"
- awesome public datasets
- r/datasets
- dataportals.org
Data settings
- Data Biographies: Getting to Know Your Data - Heather Krause, Global Investigative Journalism Network
- All Data Are Local: Thinking Critically in a Data-Driven Society - open access book by Yanni Alexander Loukissas (MIT Press)
- civic data library of context "collaborative platform for open metadata built on intersectional and inclusive practices of ethical data governance"
- Datasheets for Datasets - " we propose that every dataset be accompanied with a datasheet that documents its motivation, composition, collection process, recommended uses, and so on"
Tools
Learning
- scraping for journalism (guide from ProPublica)
- Getting Data Without (Much) Code - guide from Lena Groeger
- scrapism - "practice of web scraping for artistic, emotional, and critical ends"
- Finding Undocumented APIs and Journalists, You Should Be Looking for Undocumented APIs. Here’s How to Start - from Leon Yin at The Markup.
See also awesome-csv
Tools
- calc
- ethercalc
- framacalc
- openrefine
- datasette
- baserow
- nocodb
- pandas
- dedupe
- csvkit
- datakit - "an open-source command-line tool designed to better structure and manage projects" from Associated Press
- jupyter - see also examples from Winny de Jong's Python for Journalists and Data Journalism Handbook chapter on accounting for methods in data journalism
Learning
- databasic.io - "a suite of easy-to-use web tools for beginners that introduce concepts of working with data"
- How to 'interview' a big pile of data - NPR
- A Guide to Bulletproofing Your Data - ProPublica
- WSJ data challenge - "designed to test proficiency in tasks related to news and data"
- spreadsheets resource collection - journalist's toolbox
- six tips for better spreadsheets - nature.com
- Python for journalists - with Winny de Jong
- First Python Notebook - Ben Welsh
- Data Journalism with R and the Tidyverse - Matt Waite
- spreadsheetjournalism.com - "remake the information blinking at you into something you can use"
- Data journalism tutorials from Dan Nguyen including on OpenRefine, SQL and more
see also awesome dataviz
Tools
- datawrapper - free/ open source. See also materials for datawrapper workshops and datastori.es podcast episode
- raw graphs - free/open source. See also tutorials and datastori.es podcast episode
- gephi - free/open source
- d3 - see also Amelia Wattenberger's Intro to D3.js and awesome d3
- flourish - free for personal and educational use
- ObservableHQ - open source notebooks for analysing, exploring and visualising data
- data visualisation catalogue
- datavizproject
- storymap
- timeline.js
Learning
- ProPublica Data Style Guide - "typographic and technical best practices"
- Sigma Awards
- The Data Journalism Awards (web archive)
- Data journalism projects funded by Journalism Grants
- Prêmio Cláudio Weber Abramo de Jornalismo de Dados (Brazil)
- Premio Gabriel García Marquez (Portuguese and Spanish language based outlets)
Links to data journalism teams, sections, dedicated outlets and organisations.
- AlgorithmWatch (Germany)
- Al Jazeera Labs (Qatar)
- Associated Press (US)
- Agência Pública (Brazil)
- Animal Político (Mexico)
- AzMina (Brazil)
- Baltimore Sun (US)
- BBC Visual and Data Journalism (UK)
- Bellingcat (Netherlands)
- Bloomberg (US)
- BuzzFeed Investigations (US)
- The Bureau Local (UK)
- Caixin (China)
- Carbon Brief (UK)
- Civio (Spain)
- Correctiv (Germany)
- Convoca (Peru)
- datadesk.eco (UK)
- Data_Labe (Brazil)
- Der Spiegel (Germany)
- Deutsche Welle (Germany)
- elDiario.es (Spain)
- El Universal (Mexico)
- El Tiempo (Colombia)
- Estado de S. Paulo (Brazil)
- FiveThirtyEight (US)
- Financial Times (UK)
- Fiquem Sabendo (Brazil)
- Folha de S.Paulo (Brazil)
- Fogo Cruzado (Brazil)
- Genero & Numero (Brazil)
- Global Witness (UK)
- The Guardian (UK)
- ICIJ (US)
- InfoAmazonia (Brazil)
- Interactive Things (Switzerland)
- Katadata (Indonesia)
- Kiln (UK)
- Kontinentalist (Singapore)
- LA Times Datadesk (US)
- La Nacion (Argentina)
- Le Monde (France)
- Lighthouse Reports (Netherlands)
- Malaysiakini (Malaysia)
- The Markup (US)
- Mic.com (US)
- Mother Jones (US)
- Nation Newsplex (Kenya)
- New York Times - Upshot (US)
- Nexo Jornal (Brazil)
- Núcleo Jornalismo (Brazil)
- NZ Herald (New Zealand)
- NZZ Storytelling (Switzerland)
- OCCRP (US)
- Ojo Publico (Peru)
- O Globo (Brazil)
- Oxpeckers (South Africa)
- The Paper (China)
- postdata.club (Cuba)
- ProPublica (US)
- The Pudding (US)
- Rappler (Philippines)
- Reveal (US)
- The Rising Lab, Yicai Global (China)
- SRF Data (Switzerland)
- Salud con lupa (Peru)
- Solo Local (Argentina)
- Texty.org.ua (Ukraine)
- The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (UK)
- Washington Post (US)
- WebKid (Germany)
- Unearthed (UK)
- Zeit Online (Germany)
A small selection of portfolios....
- Ada Homolová
- Aika Rey
- Caelainn Barr
- Carmen Aguilar García
- Claire Miller - muckrack
- Dorothy Otieno
- Emilia Díaz-Struck - interview with datajournalism.com
- Fabiola Torres López - interview with ICIJ
- Jan Diehm - interview with datajournalism.com
- Lam Thuy Vo
- Lena Groeger
- Maddy Varner
- Miriam Quick
- Mona Chalabi - drawings on Instagram, interview in Data Journalism Handbook, Al Jazeera documentary, D&AD interview
- Mohammed Haddad - chapter in Data Journalism Handbook
- Shirley Wu
- Sinduja Rangarajan - interview on datajournalism.com
- Sisi Wei - Muckrack, ProPublica
- Winny de Jong
- Big List of Resources for Design, Data & Code - Lena Groeger
- Teaching resources from Lam Thuy Vo
- List of data journalism resources from Global Investigative Journalism Network and in Spanish
- Best practices for data journalism - Media Development Investment Fund
- Quick Guide to Data Journalism - datacamp
- Awesome interactive journalism
- Interactive news (spreadsheet no longer updated)