News Goggles: Nami Sumida, San Francisco Chronicle
Numbers and data play an important role in journalism. Data can illuminate trends, provide context and deepen our understanding of complex issues.
This week, we talk to data journalist Nami Sumida about her work reporting stories and creating interactive graphics on the San Francisco Chronicle’s data team. Sumida shares about the crucial role of methodology and transparency in data journalism. We examine several common sources of data that journalists use and discuss what makes some data sets more reliable than others. We also consider how charts, graphs, maps and other data visualizations can help people make sense of what numbers are communicating about our world. Grab your news goggles!
Note: This is the final News Goggles video of the school year. We will return in the fall with more resources. You can explore previous News Goggles videos and activities in NLP’s Resource Library under “Classroom Activities.”
Resources:
- “Making Sense of Data” and “Practicing Quality Journalism” (NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom).
- “Quiz: Can you make sense of data?” (NLP’s Resource Library).
Idea: Contact a journalist using NLP’s Newsroom to Classroom program and ask them about how they use data in their reporting.
Dig Deeper: Use this viewing guide for the featured News Goggles video to help students take notes on the role of data in journalism.
News Goggles annotations and activities provide news literacy takeaways on timely topics. These resources feature examples of actual news coverage, including full news reports, headlines, breaking news alerts or excerpts.
This video originally appeared in the May 1, 2023, issue of The Sift® newsletter for educators, which explores timely examples of misinformation, addresses journalism and press freedom topics and examines social media trends and issues. Read archives of the newsletter and subscribe here. Stock music in this video was provided by SoundKit from Pond5.
Have feedback about this resource? Or an idea for a future News Goggles? Please share it with us at [email protected].