This is the second of three introductory lectures in online journalism I gave at the Akademie Mode & Design in Berlin. Part 1 was The media and the internet: The history of a failure.

Thanks to the internet, journalism has entered a golden age, some say. Pundits highlighted how smartphones allowed readers to consume quality content on the go,¹ how people had access to more content than ever² and how new technologies allowed for new forms of storytelling.³ These novelties were supposed to let journalism bloom again.

This is the first of three introductory lectures in online journalism I gave at the Akademie Mode & Design in Berlin. It is a loose translation of a previous essay of mine, Comment une industrie a raté le virage des données et du numérique.

In January 1996, Mark Zuckerberg was 11, Google did not exist and the New York Times launched its website. Almost all major newspapers went online in the second half of the 1990s, years before most of the internet giants were even created.¹

Tell a thirty-something male who thinks of himself as a nice guy that, simply by being a male, he contributes to the perpetuation of male hegemony ; you’ll be answered with bewilderment and a vehement denial.

Tell a Green-leaning, nature-loving forty-something who flies regularly to a ski or hiking weekend that she’s among the worst polluters on earth ; you’ll be answered with a guilty shrug.

Tell a Labour-voting sixty-something who was born in the middle class and who acquired a nice loft in a not-yet gentrified neighborhood of London thirty years ago that she is now among the top 1% wealthiest Britons and that when the Tories push tax cuts, they do it for her, too ; you’ll be answered with a confused look, probably followed by a tirade against the rich.¹

A friend of mine, Felicity Baker,¹ recently asked me what happened since Trump took office. I mentioned the 200,000 Salvadoreans who lost their right to stay in the United States and now face exile or deportation.² I mentioned the free rein given to other dictators, such as Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, who can now keep his campaign of murders going (12,000 kills and counting³). But these events, tragic as they may be, still fall far short of the expected mayhem.

It doesn’t take a PhD in economics to see that large chunks of economic theory have little to do with reality. However, alternative narratives that could explain price formation are few and far between. I took a shot at one - and already apologize for the preposterous title.

I’m no economist, but…

Much of economics revolves around the idea of markets. Markets are physical or imagined places where buyers and sellers meet. Buyers have preferences and sellers have cost structures ; when a buyer is ready to pay for a good at a price that ensures the seller a profit, the deal is done and the market price is defined.

In the last lecture, I gave you an overview of data sources in Europe, from official portals such as Eurostat or DeStatis in Germany to the industry-specific resources and the open data movement. Most of these trends exist the world over. Today, I will focus on a series of online resources for data-driven journalists, starting by the ones we use most. I will then address single-purpose data collection projects, usually ran by scientists, and finish with databases created by journalists themselves, from the ground up.

I gave this lecture to a group of mostly non-European journalists new to data-driven reporting in late 2017.

European administrations, and Germany’s in particular, measure many things. After all, the very word statistic comes from German, where it means “the science of the state” (Staatistik). Across Europe, hundred of statistical agencies compile thousands of measurements, from soil pollution to happiness levels. Learning to navigate this maze is worth it. Many story leads sleep in these data sets, and many other can provide useful context for current or past news items.

On vit parfois des scènes banales qui provoquent pourtant des déclics profonds. La scène se passe en avril 2015. Elle n’a pas tout a fait changé ma vie, mais elle a fait basculer ma vision de la politique.

J’avais été invité par une amie, une jeune journaliste russe, à une conférence de sciences sociales à Moscou. Après avoir donné notre présentation, elle me proposa d’aller prendre un pot avec quelques unes de ses connaissances dans un bar de Kitaï-gorod, en plein centre ville. Autour de la table, ces journalistes et activistes discutaient de leurs projets - en anglais, par politesse envers moi. Ils parlaient de leurs campagnes en cours, pour le droit des handicapés ou pour la transparence de la vie publique, de leurs contacts avec les députés Untels et Untels, de leurs actions sur les réseaux sociaux pour mobiliser tel groupe dans tel objectif.

Mai 1995 fut riche en évènements. Jacques Chirac a été élu président le 7 du mois, Mark Zuckerberg a fêté son 11^e anniversaire le 14 et Libération a ouvert son site internet le 26.¹ La plupart des grands noms de la presse quotidienne l’ont rejoint sur le web dans les mois qui suivirent, suivis quelques années plus tard par les radios et les télévisions.

1995, c’est trois ans avant la création de Google, six ans avant Wikipedia, dix ans avant YouTube et Facebook, sans parler d’Instagram ou de Snapchat. Vingt ans plus tard ces médias, arrivés si tôt en ligne, sont devenus les prestataires de ces géants du web,² quand les milliardaires des nouvelles technologies ne les ont pas tout simplement racheté à la manière de Niel (Le Monde) ou Bezos (Washington Post).

En 1844, Heinrich Heine, en exil depuis treize ans à Paris, voyage en Allemagne pour aller rendre visite à son éditeur. Il en tire une épopée, Allemagne. Un conte d’hiver

En la lisant dans le train qui faisait le trajet en sens inverse, j’ai voulu faire comme lui. C’est sans doute raté, mais j’ai bien rigolé.

A la gare de l’est, terminus de ce train,
Je descends de voiture et les distingue au loin.
Ils marchent lentement, le regard aux aguets
Trois militaires vigipiratent le quai.