Comments on: Visual confections are more than mere presentation http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/02/15/striving-toward-visual-storytelling-not-just-presentation/ =SUM (Passion + journalism + data + technology) Thu, 17 May 2012 10:59:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Jeremy http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/02/15/striving-toward-visual-storytelling-not-just-presentation/comment-page-1/#comment-72 Jeremy Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:19:38 +0000 http://michelleminkoff.com/?p=627#comment-72 To distinguish between visual confections and journalistic presentations of data, I fall back on the same standard that I use for distinguishing between mere information and valuable journalism: Valuable journalism informs the decisions of its audience members. It's not just about a "storytelling" (an unfortunate word choice I've come to accept I'll never get journalists to stop using in reference to the task of putting available information in any format that is both relevant and digestible for a particular target audience). In military intelligence terms, it's about showing how the data are actionable (and therefore worth publishing, i.e. "valuable"). As I tell student journalists I speak with, it isn't news if it doesn't answer all three of "What?", "So what?", and "Now what?" Most charts in the news do OK answering the first one; most charts in the news also fail miserably answering the second and third. To distinguish between visual confections and journalistic presentations of data, I fall back on the same standard that I use for distinguishing between mere information and valuable journalism: Valuable journalism informs the decisions of its audience members. It’s not just about a “storytelling” (an unfortunate word choice I’ve come to accept I’ll never get journalists to stop using in reference to the task of putting available information in any format that is both relevant and digestible for a particular target audience). In military intelligence terms, it’s about showing how the data are actionable (and therefore worth publishing, i.e. “valuable”).

As I tell student journalists I speak with, it isn’t news if it doesn’t answer all three of “What?”, “So what?”, and “Now what?” Most charts in the news do OK answering the first one; most charts in the news also fail miserably answering the second and third.

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