Area of breakthroughs: data visualization
The focus on environmental protection and public services yields some impressive investigative works in recent years. In terms of content presentation, one potential area for further breakthroughs may well be data visualization.
Table 1 show s that none of the prize-w inning investigative reports honored by China Journalism Award since 2016 adopts data visualization, despite a heavy reliance on data as crucial evidence to strengthen their reporting and arguments.Here is an excerpt of Wang Wenzhi’s reports on illegal m ining in Qinghai that won him the First Prize in 2021.
Econom ic Information Daily reporter corroborated this assessment by internal statistics leaked from insiders at Xingqing Corporation. The coal production volumes of the company from 2007 to 2014 at a mining field in Juhugeng area recorded as such: the coal production yields 2.7088 million tons in 2007, 2.8877 million tons in 2008, 2.7551 million tons in 2009, 1.12 million tons in 2010, 3.5969 million tons in 2011, 4.4541 million tons in 2012, 1.855 million tons in 2013,1.1347 million tons in 2014. The annual average is 2.7088 million tons. The total production from 2007 to 2014 reach 20.5123 million tons, earning a net profit of 11.019 billion yuan. [22]
A simple pie chart or bar chart would make this data-heavy paragraph a lot easier for the readers to digest. Instead of listing all the annual coal production figures one by one in w ritten words, the reporter could have generalized the key points in a brief sentence and draw the readers’ attention to a well-crafted chart w ith all the specif ic numbers nicely laid out.
Such problem can also be found on other prize-w inning pieces from the same period. Generally speaking, Chinese journalists seem averse to the idea of visualizing key data from their f indings.
Aside from the inadequate application of visualization tools, another factor could be their lack of awareness or motivation to come up w ith their own data through self-driven research. It’s the central idea popularized by Philip Meyer in his ground-breaking work, Precision Journalism: A Reporter’s Introduction to Social Science Methods. In this sem inal book, Meyer advocated the approach of using social science methods to do better journalism. He said he wanted to “encourage my colleagues in journalism to apply the principles of scientif ic method to their tasks of gathering and presenting the news”. (Meyer, 2002)
M eyer tried out this idea for the f irst time in covering the 1967 Detroit Riot for the Free Press. These riots in the summer of 1967 were among the most violent and destructive racial conf licts in American history. [23] A w idely held view at that time was that those at the bottom of the social ladder w ith no money and no education launched the riots to release their discontent. Meyer thought there was more to it. He proposed the Free Press to do a survey to better portray the identities and attitudes of the rioters.
The subsequent investigation revealed that people w ith college diplomas were as likely to participate in the riots as high-school dropouts. And most of the city’s black community longed for peace and order, not chaos and violence. The report was published w ith the headline: The Non-Rioters: A Hopeful Majority. It maintained that rioters were “a small and deviant m inority”, against even the social standards of the black community, calling for social unity across the country. [24]Susan Rosegrant, Lecturer Emeritus from University of M ichigan’s Residential College describes M eyer’s 1967 riots report and his 1973 book as “changing the media practice forever by inspiring newspapers to embrace the blend of social science and journalism.” (Rosegrant, 2002)
Precision journalism as advocated by M eyer is investigative journalism in essence. A Philip Meyer Journalism Award has been created to honor the kind of outstanding investigative stories that best embody Meyer’s idea. [25] Interestingly,media organizations all around the world still prefer to use the old fam iliar term of investigative reports to denote the sort of long-form stories involving lengthy investigation guided by exhaustive research and elaborate planning. Nowhere across the industry has “precision reports” taken hold as a recognized genre of new s reporting. But it doesn’t mean that the industry resists the application of M eyer’s idea. In fact, today’s investigative reporting has been so permeated w ith social science methods that journalists feel the need to dedicate a small section in their f inal works to explain in laymen’s language the methodology chosen for the project.
In his Pulitzer Prize-w inning piece exposing the loan schemes that devastated numerous taxi driver, New York Times reporter Brian M. Rosenthal reserved this small paragraph to brief his readers how the team uncovered the scale and magnitude of the loan traps (Rosenthal, 2019):(https://www.daowen.com)
Over 10 months, The Times interviewed 450 people, built a database of every medallion sale since 1995 and reviewed thousands of individual loans and other documents, including internal bank records and confidential profit-sharing agreements.
In order not to disrupt the smooth narrative flow in the main body, some reporters prefer to attach an appendix separate from the story itself to explain in more technical details the methodology adopted, so that interested tech-savvy readers can explore for themselves. A ll these efforts aim at impressing the readers w ith the scientific nature and transparency of their reporting. One of the most eff icient ways to deliver the weight of their crucial f indings is no other than data presentation. With all the handy tools around, visualization has become the norm to strengthen the effectiveness of investigative reporting.
A brief look at the Pulitzer Prizes-w inning investigative reports since 2017 show s that f ive out of the six recipients use data visualization extensively either across the entire project or at least in some installments of the series. The only exception is Washington Post’s series in 2019 looking into the sexual predation by a University of Southern California gynecologist over a quarter century. Due to the sensitive nature of the subject, the series rely primarily on one-on-one interview s w ith victims to maxim ize the emotional im pacts by reconstructing their traumatic experiences. Data presentations are not the top pick to create such effects.
Tab le 2 W inners of Pu litzer Prize for Investigative Reporting since 2017.
continued
IR stands for investigative reporting in the table.
Source: The Pulitzer Prizes off icial website: https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-w inners-by-year last viewed time.
In comparison, it remains hard to identify investigative stories done by Chinese journalists compatible w ith M eyer’s vision of integrating social science methods into vigorous reporting. Data journalism has established its foothold as a regular column on major online platforms like M eishuke on the Paper, Data Blog on Netease.com, and Shuzishuo on Caixin. [26] However, data visualization as a contentenhancing technique or way of thinking is yet to become an integral part in Chinese investigative reporters’ tool kits.