Over the past decade, people have been talking about the decline of journalism (or the evolution of it, depending on how you want to look at it). While the industry has been behind on most technological advances, one way that they have adapted is with interactive visualization and “database journalism.”
As a former journalist, it is nice to see newspapers taking major steps forward in some technological aspect and doing a great job doing so. Whether they are showing the voting breakdowns of a state, the unemployment rates of different kinds of people or showing how often certain words are searched for on Google, it is this type of technology that can have a major impact on the world.
What I found interesting was how does one figure out when one has an interesting chart and is not just adding things to it for the sake of adding something. It is a very fine line that can be difficult to balance on at times.
It was also intriguing to hear how people in digital visualization are already becoming specialized, that there is not just one person doing all of these visualizations. You now have certain people to do line graphs, certain people to do pie graphs, certain people to do geographical graphs and so on. Digital visualization is evolving and growing quicker than anyone could have anticipated.
You know, just like the rest of the Internet.
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