How Reuters data could transform its journalism

Justin Ellis of the Nieman Journalism Lab writes about Reuters data editor Reg Chua and how he is looking to tap into the company’s data products to improve its journalism.

Ellis writes, “That fundamental act of packaging and imparting information is what Reg Chua is concerned with. Since being hired as data editor for Thomson Reuters, Chua has set his sights on what Reuters’ journalists on the media side of the fence could learn from the more product-izable business side — namely that people have a willingness, and appetite, for new forms of expressing and delivering information. As data editor, Chua wants Reuters to think bigger than simply using databases in reporting, or building expressive visualizations to partner with stories. What if the data itself, decoupled from the trappings of newswriting, were the story?

“‘There’s a whole bunch of proprietary databases we don’t use as effectively as we could in terms of reporting and stories,’ Chua told me. ‘More broadly, my job is to get us to use data more effectively in journalism.’

“To be clear, Chua isn’t advocating some kind of weird Reuters-synergy where you get fed bits of Westlaw or any other database as news. It’s more about the structure and delivery of information: finding the most effective way of using current technology to meet customers needs. Which is why Chua points to outlets like EveryBlock or PolitiFact, which present non-traditional forms of information as news. PolitiFact, Chua says, ‘is a good example of when you take a newsroom and rethink what they do, turn it into data, and create a new kind of — for lack of a better word — news product.'”

Read more here.