This paper addresses the increased use of data and data visualization in newsrooms, which has yielded a new form of storytelling: data stories. In journalism, data stories or storytelling with data are the new buzzwords. What journalists mean by data stories, however, remains blurred. We use the emergence of data stories as an opportunity to describe the changing understanding of journalistic storytelling. Based on interviews with editorial leaders, data journalists, developers, and designers in 26 major news organizations in Europe, we focus on practitioners’ perspective on data stories. In our empirical study, we identified seven key features of journalistic data stories: data, communicative function, the textual-visual relationship, structure and design of a story, interactivity, and the meta-story. These findings contribute to rethinking the narrative approach to journalism.

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This chapter explores the role of data visualization in relation to transparency in the news, a field in which a decline in trust and a subsequent need to reassert credibility is an ongoing challenge. Being transparent about how the news is produced is seen as one way of generating trust, yet there has been very little empirical research into transparency practices in newsrooms. Our chapter fills this gap, focusing on transparency and data visualization. We argue that working with data visualization involves particular enactments of transparency, many of which are surprisingly not visual.

The visualization of numeric data is becoming an important element in journalism. In this article, we present an interview study investigating data visualization practices in Scandinavian newsrooms. Editorial leaders, data journalists, developers and graphic designers in 10 major news organizations in Norway, Sweden and Denmark provide information for the study on a range of issues concerning visualization practices and experiences. The emergence of multi-skilled specialist groups as well as innovation in technology and the ‘mobile first mantra’ are identified as important factors in the fast-developing practices of journalistic data visualization. Elements of tension and negotiation are revealed for issues concerning the role and effect of complex exploratory data visualizations and concerning the role of ordinary journalists in the production of charts and graphs.