Data visualization gets its props on web and information design sites, such as Web Design Ledger, Web Designer Depot, and Information Is Beautiful, which feature some incredible examples of this science (or is it art). Yet its influence on the way the news media tells stories and configures its platforms is still sadly limited.
That’s not to say it doesn’t get any play. Magazines like Wired frequently simplify the complex or enliven the intellectual with clever visualizations. On this week’s Beancast, Angela Natividad of Hypios, ended the show by advising listeners to check out this nifty World Cup predictor from Wired UK. Also on the World Cup tip, Spanish sports language daily, Marca, created this fantastic interactive schedule.
In fact, sports journalism has spawned many of the best data visualizations—perhaps something to do with the fact that reporting on sport is often a more lucrative business than reporting on, say, foreign affairs, and thus sports outlets still have the budget to commission these things. I like this simple but effective infographic from atpworldtour.com showing which rackets top tennis players use.
Or what about this from TinkerMedia, showing which Mexican wrestlers have been demasked by which of their foes.
In somewhat more meaningful news (not that lucha libre isn’t vital to humanity or anything), the recent oil crisis has brought out the best in data viz at a couple of mainstream outlets with this oil spill tracker from the New York Times and these from Fast Company and NG Oil & Gas.
But these examples are all about telling stories, not about offering readers new print edition or website configurations. With most news-focused websites sitting somewhere on a sad spectrum that runs from overfilled-imitation-of-the-printed-product to somehow-we-took-a-huge-expensive-news-organization-and-turned-it-into-a-blog, it’s a shame that so few have tried to offer readers any radical reconfigurations of their content.
There is, of course, the Times Skimmer, which I like and find more accessible than the regular home page. And a lot of news outlets now offer readers ways to configure their homepages based on certain preferences. But what if they offered homepage options that captured their trending stories in live and exciting ways along the links of Digg Labs’ Swarm or 365, or the Google News-powered Newsmap? How about The Whale Hunt as a new format for photo-based stories? Or what about this as an interactive presentation for week in review type offerings:
Click for hi-res view
Today one of the key challenges for the few news organizations who still fund expensive, original content creation is to find better ways to unearth, distribute, and market their content to generations who’ve grown up with gaming, dynamic presentation, and an expectation of interactivity. In that environment data visualization could do more than just bring their stories to life, it could bring their tired platforms to life, too.