10 Data Journalism Tools for Making an Impact
Photo by dlxmedia.hu on Unsplash
Data journalism isn’t just about creating impressive visuals — although those are definitely part of it. It’s also about data gathering and fact-checking, which is becoming increasingly essential. It’s about blending everything to create impactful, insightful stories.
According to the 2023 State of Data Journalism Survey, more than half (51%) of respondents are predominantly or entirely using external graphic tools. But with so many tools out there for data journalists, which ones should you turn to?
Here are a few of the most popular tools among data journalists, as well as a few you may not have heard of.
- DataFuel.dev: This platform specializes in scraping web content and converting it into clean, markdown-structured datasets. No complex scraping code needed. Free trials are available, with several paid options to choose from afterwards.
- Datawrapper: Datawrapper is a trusted tool that’s been around for more than a decade. It’s used by newsrooms, NGOs, financial institutions and others to create visually compelling charts, maps and tables. Datawrapper enables you to connect your visualization to a live data feed or Google Sheet for dynamic, automatic updates to ensure readers are always seeing the most up-to-date version. The charts are also responsive, making for an ideal display on desktop and mobile. A free plan allows you to create, publish and download the graphics (with a “Created by Datawrapper” attribution). Paid plans enable users to customize designs based on a company style guide, ditch the attribution, add more members to the team and download in multiple formats.
- Flourish: Flourish is another popular visualization tool that’s great for beginners (no coding required). Interactive charts allow your audience to engage with the asset to dive deeper into the story. A free plan is perfect for freelancers or small newsrooms, while paid options provide additional features ideal for teams, like approval workflows, on-brand themes, analytics and more.
- GeoJournalism: Looking to learn more about data visualization for geographic data? This online learning platform offers a wide array of helpful resources and training materials geared toward journalists, designers and developers. Tracks cover environmental sensors, data collection, data wrangling, a dive into the Jeo WordPress theme and more.
- Google Data Studio: Data Studio, from the Google News Initiative, is a powerful tool for building interactive visualizations (maps and line/area/scatter charts) that update in real time with data from a variety of sources.
- Google Dataset Search: Use this Google tool to locate datasets from thousands of repositories on the web through simple keyword searches or by searching specific websites. Results also display a dataset’s publication date, sources, authors and description.
- Journalist Studio: This is a “collection of tools to empower journalists to do their work more efficiently, creatively, and securely,” run by Google. The Common Knowledge Project, Data Commons, DataSet Search and Pinpoint are just a few of the tools in the Studio that can be incredibly helpful for data journalists.
- Neo4j: This graph database platform is handy for revealing invisible contexts and hidden relationships within your data. Short, introductory webinars are available to familiarize yourself with the tool. Free and paid plans are available.
- OpenRefine: If your data is messy, OpenRefine can clean it, transform it from one format into another, and extend it with web services and external data. Compare your data to external databases or historical versions, fix inconsistencies, and more with this free, open source tool. For journalists, OpenRefine makes it easy to clear up alternate names, correct spellings or even identify trends in your data.
- QGIS: This free and open source tool allows users to create, edit, visualize, analyze and publish geospatial information on desktop, mobile and print.
What’s your go-to tool for data journalism? Let us know in the comments!
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Rocky Parker is the Manager of Audience and Journalist Engagement at Cision PR Newswire. She's been with the company since 2010 and has worked with journalists and bloggers as well as PR and comms professionals. Outside of work, she can be found trying a new recipe, binging a new show, or cuddling with her pitbull, Hudson.
