“LET THE DATA DO THE TALKING"

  Report of Webinar on ‘Data Journalism’

The Department of Journalism and Mass Communication organised a webinar on Data Journalism, Reporting without borders’ in association with Rotary Club Jaipur Gurukul on Saturday, October 10th, 2020. The keynote speaker of the webinar was Ms. Rangoli Agarwal, Data Journalist, How India Lives. She is also an alumni of IIS (Deemed to be University) and is practicing journalism from last four years.

Ms. Rangoli has worked as reporter with Daily News Analysis, Jaipur and as Rajasthan Coordinator with 101 Reporters before joining "How India Lives." Her work has also been published in Indiaspend, Firstpost, Hindustan Times, Mint, and Asia Times. She now specialises in weaving stories around data and is a keen enthusiast of promoting data journalism as a career option.

Ms. Rangoli commenced the webinar by sharing her story of how she decided to become a data journalist and what enticed her to choose this field. Further, to the webinar she shared the advantages of incorporating data in a news story to make it more meaningful and interesting such as it breaks myths, it is the best verification tool and how it adds more perspective to a story. She also shared the 3R formula wherever data's are involved that is, Read, Report and Review.

Further, Ms Rangoli briefed the students about the process of doing a data story which involves three steps- 1) Know where to get the data from? 2) Bring in a perspective 3) Simplify for better understanding. Ms. Rangoli added that data journalism is more about perspective and less about complex formulas and the work of compilation and bringing out the results is to be done by machine. She also talked about various growth opportunities in the field of data journalism. Her session was knowledge enhancing for the students.

In the end, the webinar was left open for the students to put on their thinking caps and ask their mind and heart out.