Data-driven reporting:

The originality and independent efforts of investigative reporters are increasingly embodied in effective data presentation. Thanks to technological advancements,reporters are fully capable of building their own datasets based on open sources materials and their own investigations. “Last Words” is the award-w inning special series of the Boston Globe. The newspaper’s Spotlight team “assemble a database of Massachusetts deaths from 1999 to m id-2020” ^[4] as the foundation of their econom ic portrait of deaths in Massachusetts. The database is further analyzed in perspectives of race, income, sex, age, and occupation to expose the ingrained inequalities in American society exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandem ic.(https://www.daowen.com)

Such enormous amount of work is unthinkable w ithout the aid of data retrieval and other analytical tools strengthened by artificial intelligence. Such data-rich stories rely heavily on visualization to enable the audiences to make better sense of the f indings. Charts, tables, and infographics of all kinds, enhanced by interactive and multi-media designs are increasingly becom ing the norms of investigative reports’ content styles.