Mobile journalism in a data journalism newsroom - making data come alive

Mobile journalism is the new journalist’s notepad and pen. So says Gus Silber, journalist, author and scriptwriter.

It’s Wednesday morning at Codebridge, and eight journalists are seated in front of a screen, cell phones in hand. We’re well into week four of the first Code4SA Data Journalism Academy, where experienced, working journalists from various media houses are being moulded into data journalists.

Data driven journalism can be dry, and text-and-numbers-heavy. Frankly, reading some data stories can feel like hard labour. So we’re learning how to tell these stories in a way that gives the reader an experience that is informative and pleasurable. Complicated stories don’t have to be boring. Gus Silber is the expert on this. They call it mojo – mobile journalism. The beauty of the age of the smartphone is that short, quick stories can easily be created on a journalist’s cell phone. The idea is to complement complex stories, and greatly enhance the story-telling process. So, here we are on week three, and these eight journalists are not only learning mojo, but producing stories on their phones, too.

“One of the great things about being a journalist is that you can enter people’s lives…On a quiet news day you can make these short videos, giving a snap shot of someone’s life,” says Silber. Chelsea Geach is a journalist for Independent Newspapers who is attending the Data Journalism Academy. She runs Independent’s mojo unit in Cape Town. She’s our mojo specialist at the Academy. Writing for The Journalist on the #FeesMustFall protests, Geach says this was the moment when mojo made its name as an essential story-telling tool in any journalist’s arsenal. Here, hard news came to the reader via mojo.

But what place does it have in data driven journalism? “Data journalism is excellent at dealing with mass information, and seeing the trends and patterns in numbers. What it lacks is two pretty non-negotiable facets of a good story: character, and action. This is where writing, photography and video can step in,” says Geach.

Silber says “mobile” has more than one meaning, here. It’s creating mobility between two mediums. “Data journalism is often done in a static environments, with journalists sitting at their desks working with data and numbers. Mojo is getting off your chair, talking to people and walking the story. It makes data journalism come alive,” Silber says. “Mobile journalism is a must-have skill for journalists. Mojo is nimble and flexible. What’s exciting about the Academy is that it’s a laboratory for new kinds of journalism, combining elements of traditional journalism and 21st century, digital thinking.”

Spot on.

Here are our first mojo experiments

• Tea time at Codebridge by Chelsea Geach
• Siphe Macanda’s report on our Mojo workshop
• Farren Collins’ piece documenting Codebridge at work

Check out some of the tools used in this workshop here: Adobeclip Powerdirector iMovie