A new style of news reporting: Wikileaks and data-driven journalism

Abstract

The coverage of Wikileaks' huge amounts of leaked data was a challenge for newspapers – they had to figure out how to get stories out of extensive and complex data sets and how to present their findings to readers. The result significantly differs from traditional news reporting; including illustrations, interactive web applications and reading instructions to make the material accessible. This style of news reporting is called data-driven journalism. The international interest in the leaks combined with collaborative work between newspapers from different countries made it a new trend in current journalism. A key lesson from working with this kind of material is that data collection is essential for the effectiveness of the used techniques. If journalists would adapt this insight to their own, internal data collection process, this form of news reporting could be used on a large scale and be much more common. The coverage of Wikileaks' might give a glimpse of how journalism will look like in the future.