VisualJournalism is proclaiming the “Death of Datavisualization in the News”, which from their description seems to also be proclaiming the death of the slew of infographics that get cranked out by some design houses on a seemingly hour-by-hour basis. Their reason: Data Visualization isn’t News, it’s a tool used to help promote and explain the news.
No longer will it be enough to execute graphics with a certain wow-factor and then hope for the best. You need to be sure, that you have a story to tell. We’re taking back responsibility for the visual experience and will try to avoid all the arbitrary connections and untrue stories, that readers have been fooled into seeing in the presented data-sets.
Anyone knowledgeable about visualization knows this already, but to some this is a big deal: Far too many websites and companies think they can simply post the data and a clever interactive tool and they’re done. In reality, this is merely the first part of the process: The tool must be used to find some previously unknown nugget of information, or provide some new glimpse of information previously buried in the mountain of data. That’s where the News is.
via The Death of Datavisualization in the News – VisualJournalism.
