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When we think of traditional news gatherers, we might conjure up the image of an obstreperous character brazenly hassling a slimy official for the real story -- or hovering paparazzi harassing a poor celebrity innocently shopping for handbags...
...Today, your jaded, hard-drinking, courtroom-loitering newsman could just as well be represented on the silver-screen by an enthusiastic bookworm-like computer geek. This is thanks to a new form of reporting known as "data journalism." Data journalism crept into modern media through the back door. You may not even have noticed. ...Even if it's not neatly stored in databases, it's often regurgitated into paper-based or PDF reports that can be accessed, sometimes through Freedom of Information Act requests. The data can then be cleaned, scanned, and converted into organized databases. Then it can be sorted into usable intelligence about a particular subject, limited only by the analyst's -- or data journalist's -- creativity....
Data journalism may provide PR opportunities.