More than three in four journalists globally lack advanced data reporting skills, a 2022 State of Data Journalism Survey found.
In Africa, the Media Hack Collective (MHC) is addressing this, by equipping journalists with a working knowledge of data journalism skills and tools. Since launching in 2020, MHC has trained over 200 journalists in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda.
“There is relatively little data journalism done on the continent, and if we can encourage others to try to use data in their journalism as a result of what we do, then we feel that is successful,” said MHC co-founder Alastair Otter.
Data journalism during the pandemic
Frustrated by a lack of data journalism on the continent, Otter and fellow journalist Laura Grant launched MHC at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We had both been in large mainstream newsrooms but had not had the opportunity to practice data journalism in a meaningful way. MHC was an opportunity to do some of the work we wanted to do,” said Otter.
As the pandemic surged, the duo saw an opportunity to produce impactful data reporting around the virus’ impact. They built an interactive dashboard that tracked COVID-19 cases in South Africa, which they later expanded to other African countries.
“The value of data journalism skills came to the fore during COVID-19. We realized that the visualizations we shared were helping people understand how the pandemic was progressing,” said Otter.
In October 2021, MHC held a virtual data journalism masterclass and fellowship to train journalism students on critical data reporting skills. Participants learned how to source, extract and analyze datasets, produce data-driven stories and use infographics and visualization tools to present data. Fellows also received grants to produce data-driven stories.
"We see a lot of people we’ve trained doing great work, so there is a sense that we have had an impact," said Otter.
Developing data reporting skills
The most valuable aspect of the MHC trainings, said Grant, lay in how they built journalists’ capacity to read and understand data.
“It’s about giving people confidence to know that if they encounter a statistic – like a school pass rate – they will be able to look at the original data, or they can explore data in a chart and find a trend that can add context to a story,” explained Grant. “It’s baby steps. The number of stories and the quality of the storytelling are only going to get better with time.”
MHC also provides technical and editorial support to help its trainees produce data stories on the job. “Often, when people we’ve trained go back to their newsrooms, they are one of a small number of people who have data skills. Sometimes they are the only people,” said Otter. “Expectations to deliver can be high. It can take a while to produce a data-based story, and there’s pressure in newsrooms to deliver stories quickly. We offer support to our former trainees if they need it.”
Oge Udegbunam, a 2021 masterclass trainee, was able to produce more data-driven stories for her agriculture beat at Premium Times. “The training helped improve my data analysis skills. I can now better understand and interpret budget documents and craft stories from them, to hold the government accountable,” she said.
MHC's training was “instructive and fundamental" for Abiodun Jamiu, helping him use data to cover conflict in Nigeria’s northern region, and humanize his stories beyond numbers of deaths and casualties. “Personally, I learned that numbers have impacts. Every single figure represents people’s livelihoods,” he said. “[These figures] should be humanized and simplified in such a way that citizens can relate to and understand to make informed decisions.”
To help audiences better understand the news through data journalism, in 2021 MHC launched The Outlier, a publication that uses infographics, charts, and other data visualization tools to tell stories that affect the daily lives of people on a variety of issues, including health, politics, education, climate change and economics.
“We focused initially on producing small, focused charts daily to help people understand the issues of the day at a glance,” said Otter.
Challenges
Few newsrooms in Africa can afford to send their reporters to receive training in data journalism, said Otter, adding that it is also difficult to teach the complexities of data journalism to a large pool of journalists, especially online.
Access to information on the continent is another major hurdle. “Generally, data journalism in Africa is hard because of [the] limited resources, but mostly because there are very limited data sources,” he said.
To address the challenges, MHC designed a free email-based introductory course that familiarizes journalists with some data journalism fundamentals.
“We focus on [teaching] the basics, so we can introduce as many people as possible to what data journalism is and give them enough skills to start using data in their day-to-day work,” said Otter. “Our objective with training is to do what we can to showcase African data journalism and help others get into this [data journalism] space.”
Photo by MART PRODUCTION.
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