DATA JOURNALISM

The clock read 3:00 am but I was still crouched in front of my laptop, piecing together interview transcripts and designing multimedia graphics to supplement my reporting. Over the course of my high school journalism career, I’ve been eager to cover a wide variety of topics, from wildfires to disparities in elementary music education. To me, writing an article isn’t just about presenting the facts; it’s about listening. Whether I’m speaking to students at schools adopting new phone policies or to pharmacists concerned by the divisive stance on vaccinations, I always strive to focus on the voices that matter most to the story. I seek out individuals who will enrich my article with their informed perspectives, but also people who challenge and deepen my own understanding.

My dedication has revealed one of my greatest challenges as a storyteller: restraint. Because I care so deeply about properly conveying the perspectives of my sources and amplifying their voices, I often write pieces well over 1000 words. My longest piece — an exposé on poultry mistreatment in commercial farming — sprang from my desire to convey the sense of rage and horror I experienced after speaking to activists and researchers.

Multimedia became my saving grace.

I’ve found that through infographics, charts, and audio summaries, I can cover my topics in a detailed manner, in ways that are now more engaging and clear for my audience. For example, in a story about California’s mandate for Native American history education, I created an interactive timeline to highlight the government’s long-standing policies toward Indigenous peoples that helped contextualize their skepticism and distrust. In a multimedia feature examining how apps exacerbate the challenges youth face, instead of repeatedly listing usage statistics, I consolidated the data into an interactive graph on Flourish that allows readers to sort by app with a single click. Multimedia tools have allowed me to continue honoring my commitment to ethical, thorough reporting without overwhelming my reader.

One of my favorite tools for data visualization is Flourish. Statistics can be hard to grasp when presented only as numbers, and people tend to respond better to charts, especially in pieces with a lot of data. Including visualizations helps emphasize key points and makes the content more accessible, so I try to include some form of data visualization in nearly every article I produce.

I’m also very conscious of the visual appeal of these graphics, since presentation plays a big role in keeping readers engaged and preventing them from feeling overwhelmed by walls of text. To maintain a cohesive and professional look, I choose color palettes based on the feature photo and often match the colors of chart elements to ensure a cohesive, professional design throughout the piece.

Interactive infographics, especially timelines, are extremely effective in diversifying traditional data visualizations like charts and graphs. Not only do they show your deep commitment to the topic and the research you completed, but they also allow readers to engage with visually rich information at their own pace.

I utilize Knight Lab’s TimelineJS, a tool that creates timelines using a Google spreadsheet, to help present developments chronologically. These graphics help readers both understand and remember progression and cause-and-effect relationships in a way that static graphics cannot.

Note: The embedded timelines do not display on this site because the platform restricts certain embed code. Please use the buttons below to view the complete timelines.

One tool I use to preserve space for stronger narrative writing while still demonstrating in-depth reporting is infoboxes. While many publications use them to list resources or contact information, I use mine to incorporate additional perspectives that might otherwise interrupt the flow of the main story.

For example, when I reported on disparities in music education across local middle and elementary schools, I had interviewed numerous students. However, the article was already thousands of words long, and fully integrating each of their narratives would have disrupted the pacing. Instead, I grouped several students’ stories from one particular school into an infobox, which allows readers who want a deeper understanding to engage with those perspectives without swamping the primary structure of the piece.

I applied a similar strategy in another multimedia feature where I interviewed more than nine sources. Using infoboxes allowed me to amplify their voices and preserve depth of my reporting, while maintaining clarity in the main article.