Chapter 9 is all about data. There is something else built around data, oh yeah, life. As the chapter illustrates, data has been around for a very long time. Data s gathered anytime news is gathered. News, then, could be described as ‘new’ data.
Newspapers of old, you know, the paper sort, couldn’t truly take advantage of data because there was simply too much to list on a page. Confined within margins, newspapers just didn’t contain the amount of physical real estate required to put so much information forward at a time.
With the advent of the Internet as a medium in which to disperse information, data has come to the forefront of good journalism. Say there was a fire during a parade, and that a fire had broken out at the parade in the years past. Well, using data in the form of a map, you could plot the points where certain fires had been reported, and even relay other facts that would simply go missing in a traditional newspaper. You can plot a nearly infinite amount of points and never think twice.
The Internet allows for more storage and gathering of data than any other medium, which we have all come to accept.
It is important, however, to not only use data to make our stories or coverage better, but as journalists we are responsible for creating new content and data with which to contribute to the growth of more current data. Our credit as journalists and our responsibilities can stay the same, as long as we treat the collection and dispersion of digital data with the same respect we treated newspapers with.
