Journalism in the Age of Data

Watching this video was interesting since I have been on the other side of the infographic as the producer and not the viewer.  In college, I helped started our TV network and I was briefly in charge of creating graphics for some of the TV shows, more specifically our news show, Niner News.  I mostly did lower thirds for our reporters but sometimes I had to create infographics for things that you could not get video for such as an increase in tuition or a new law passed by the government that could affect students.  This visualization takes a lot longer than most people would think.  Since it was for a news program, it had to be professional enough so it does not affect our credibility as well as interesting enough so people don’t change the channel.  Since my professional background is in video, I have a firm belief that visuals are what stick in people’s mind.   Visuals are what draws people in and keeps them coming back.  I think this is extremely important for a newspaper.  Newspapers are a dying bread. Since you can access pretty much everything you want on the internet, newspapers need to be still drawing in readers.  By visualizing certain information, this can bring more subscribers in and keep them coming back for more.