What would data literate journalism look like?

There’s a lot of different schools of thought about how to make journalism good.

Here’s a few:

you can have a strong editor who doesn’t share expertise or strong opinions on the topics being reported. This way, you get a second opinion on what’s being written. This helps from a standpoint of reducing bias, but it’s limited due to the skills that the relevant parties have.

You could also have a more algorithmic way of choosing topics to report on in the first place. If a newspapers’ inclination is to report on a specific topic and it’s already known the broader worldview, the quality may suffer. By contrast, having something specifically aim to increase diversity of topics and thought could be helpful.

You can train your newsroom to interview all relevant people related to the stories in question to better reflect their experiences. This way, you’ll see a more complete picture. Similarly, you increase first-hand reporting.

But, the problem with all of these plans is they’re primarily based on talking to people and finding internal consistency in what they’re saying. Unfortunately, this is not enough for the modern day. If journalists can’t assess the credibility of studies, basic research methods, etc., there’s little reason to think they can really probe for weaknesses when they interview experts.

Most officials tend to focus on a narrow goal when they try and achieve policy preferences, if not bureaucracy for its own sake. To that end, when someone makes claims about their solutions being able to solve for X, Y, and Z, there need to be tools to evaluate whether it’s likely.

I think data literacy would be very good for the American people because there’s an automatic deference that happens if it’s too hard to find things out. When you slow down, and investigate the claims being made, the result is less news, done better.

I yearn for media that makes me better but recognize that journalism often makes me worse. So, a high quality data journalist really would allow me to better understand effect, and really improve my trust in them.

Data journalists would also be more externally useful. Seeing tons of studies would allow their skills to be more valuable. This in turn would raise the reputation and marketability of these jobs. Being able to determine whether someone’s selling things worth buying for instance is something that the private sector could use.

I imagine data journalism would be a noble career and would be more fractional in nature as people would have more avenues for money.