THIS POST WAS WRITTEN ON THE 11TH, BUT TUMBLR DIDN’T SEEM TO UPLOAD IT UNTIL NOW.
Today: traveling - from my Airbnb to the Perugia rail station, to Rome, to the airport of Rome, to the airport of Belgrade, to my Airbnb in Belgrade.
And in-between: the OpenNews monthly check in! I love it already and I’m super happy that it exists. I just like check-ins, and retrospective meetings - they make you stop and think and summarize your experience.
Also, thanks to all the traveling I finished “The Curious Guide to Data Journalism ” by Jonathan Stray (maybe the best written text I’ve ever read in this field so far). And I thought about random stuff, eg that the German translation of the English “can’t wait” is “almost can’t wait”, which, of course, is so much more honest. I’ve rarely been in situations where I really couldn’t wait anymore. As a fan of anticipation, I still like to say “can’t wait”, though.
I’m looking forward to Belgrade! No pizza, pasta and Gelato anymore, I hope. It became a little bit too much.
Input? 4
Output? 2
Learnings?
Examples are more persuasive than numbers. Meaning, we form our stereotypes and beliefs based on anecdotes and ignore the statistics.
If we want to work against that and show our audience an “average” world (or the world that most people live in), we should write about normal cases, not the outliers. Writing about the outliers is more interesting, but doesn’t portray the world in the most honest way - and often strengthens stereotypes. (I’m so amazed by how much sense that conclusion makes. Thanks, Jonathan Stray.)
The more (consistent) details you add to something, the more real it appears.
Questions?
What book about data journalism / journalism in general should I read next?