Data Journalism Foundations and Media Standards

In an era of information overload, the ability to uncover hidden narratives within datasets is a crucial skill for modern storytellers. This course teaches you how to transition from traditional reporting to data-driven journalism, ensuring your work is both impactful and ethically sound. You will progress from understanding core data concepts to actively gathering, cleaning, and verifying information for public interest stories. By studying real-world scenarios and practicing with written exercises, you will learn to turn raw numbers into clear, engaging, and accurate news reports. What you'll learn: Understand foundational definitions of data journalism and core media standards; Acquire public data legally using Freedom of Information requests and ethical web scraping techniques; Clean and analyze datasets to find patterns, trends, and outliers; Verify data sources to prevent misinformation and maintain journalistic integrity; Translate complex statistics into clear, reader-friendly narratives; Apply modern ethical guidelines to data collection, privacy, and representation. The course begins with essential terminology and the ethical framework of modern reporting. You will then explore practical methods for data acquisition, analysis, and storytelling, supported by written exercises to reinforce your learning. This training is designed for aspiring journalists, writers, and communications professionals with no prior background in data analysis or programming. Start your journey into data-driven storytelling today.