Alan Smith is a rare breed: he leads the FT's team of data reporters and designers, but has a background in the stuffy world of official statistics as former head of digital content at the UK's Office for National Statistics. Alan is also author of How Charts Work, a handbook on designing with data using the FT's principles.

He chats with Simon and Alberto about his approach to data journalism and how to make numbers accessible for everyone.

This week we meet data journalist Eunice Magwambo, whose team has trained over 2,000 journalists in data journalism and visualisation and is part of a new movement of talented data reporters in the region. She talks about how data journalism in Africa is different, the appetite for data-led stories and the importance of sharing those visuals.

You can find more of Eunice's work here.

Recorded live at the International Journalism Fesitival in Perugia, Italy on April 21, 2023. This panel brought together some great practitioners producing award-winning data journalism in small newsrooms and sometimes on their own. Moderated by Simon, the panel includes:

Yvette Cabrera, Center for Public Integrity

Miguel Angel Dobrich, Dobcast, Uruguay

Yao-Hua Law, Macaranga, Malaysia

Sisi Wei, The Markup, US

Great data journalism is often seen as a resource-intensive exercise that only huge newsrooms can afford to indulge in. But the speakers in this panel prove that's not the case. Working in small teams - sometimes alone - they managed to pull off some of the year's best work. Learn from their experiences, tips and techniques.

Organised in association with Sigma Awards.

It's a different kind of episode! Live from the 2023 International Journalism Festival in Perugia, this session features co-host Simon plus the following great speakers:

Tara Kelly, data editor at the European Journalism Centre

Sondre Solstad is The Economist’s Senior Data Journalist

Moderated by Lars Boering, director of the EJC

The session looks at how data journalists work, who they collaborate with, and the latest trends and sought after skills within the field. These are just some of the questions The State of Data Journalism Survey 2022 asks journalists from around the world every year. From identifying favourite data tools to sharing thoughts on the future of the field, this panel discussion delves into the current state of data journalism.

How do you judge data journalism in 2023? The Sigma Data Journalism Awards is the only global award for the field and this episode sees Simon and Alberto chatting with Gina Chua, Aron Pilhofer, Kuek Ser Kuang Keng and Marianne Bouchart to discuss the state of data journalism today, the point of the awards and what's happening next.

The music is based on daily entries for the awards this season. You can create your own with Two Tone here. Download the full track here.

Rani Molla is a senior correspondent at Vox Media, reporting for Recode on the intersection between work, technology and the future. She uses data to tell stories every day, whether it's about our return to the office (or lack of), the impacts of AI on our world or the rise of burnout.

In the latest episode of the pod, we chat about how she uses data to tell stories, her favourite tools and why data always makes journalism better.

The music this week, made with TwoTone, is historical quit rates data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

RJ Andrews is the founder of data design studio Info We Trust and author of a new series of books delving into the deep history of of data visualisation and storytelling. In this episode of the pod, he talks about three significant parts of the history of data visuals: Florence Nightingale, Emma Willard and Étienne-Jules Marey. While Nightingale created powerful visuals that changed how we understand mortality, Willard portrayed time itself. And Marey wrote a guide to visualising data that seems current today. You can buy the books here.

The music this week, made with TwoTone, is life expectancy, based on a dataset used in the Nightingale book and provided to us by RJ. Life expectancy at birth is defined as the average number of years that a newborn could expect to live if he or she were to pass through life subject to the age-specific mortality rates of a given period. Data compiled by Our World in Data based on estimates by James C. Riley, Clio Infra, and the United Nations Population Division.

Jen Christiansen is the author of Building Science Graphics (published by A K Peters/CRC Press) and a senior graphics editor at Scientific American.

In this episode of the pod, she talks about her approach to visualising scientific stories and to graphics, based on her long career in the field. "For any scientist to  have their work in the lab or in the field and be worthwhile, you need to communicate it to someone - whether you're communicating it to your peers or to the broader public or to funders ... And I think that most training has been focused on making sure people can write, but we don't have a lot of training for everyone in terms of design fundamentals and different languages you can use that are pictorial to help get your point across and to help people have greater understanding of what it is that you're doing."

The music this week, made with TwoTone, is Radio Observations of the Pulse Profiles and Dispersion Measures of Twelve Pulsars from this dataset, supplied to us by Jen.

Harry Enten (@forecasterenten on Twitter) is one of the most-high-profile data journalists in the world. He explains the numbers every day on CNN - whether it's election polling, sports or even his original passion: meterology, specifically snowstorms.

"I definitely see myself as a storyteller," says Enten and he chats with Alberto and Simon about his approach to making the numbers understandable for a TV audience, which charts work (and which don't), as well as who is in his head each time he presents. 

They also discuss polling and how to report on the nuances of surveys. "I wonder about what's the best way to present uncertainty all the time."

"I understand the data better than the audience does because I sit with the data for such a long period of time," he says. "And I almost have to step back and be like, okay, if I didn't know this topic, if let's say this is about people's favorite soups or something to do with cooking that I don't understand at all, what can I take away from this graphic? Would I really be able to understand it?"

The music this week, made with TwoTone, is based on snowfall in Central Park from 1869 from this dataset, via weather.gov.

Nigel Holmes is a graphic designer, author, and theorist, who focuses on information graphics and information design. He's also the author of a new book, Joyful Infographics, a personal journey through visual design. Alberto and Simon chat with Nigel about why humanity and fun is so vital in graphics.

The music this week, made with TwoTone, is is based on honey production in the US, from 1998 to 2012.