State of Data Journalism 2023

The results from the third edition of The State of Data Journalism Survey are now available. We covered the industry’s demographics, skills, tools, work practices, and the usage of AI and OSINT in data journalism.

You can also explore the 2022 survey, including results, methodology, and data.

Explore the sections

Below, you'll discover detailed results for each section. Additionally, you have the option to download a comprehensive PDF report encompassing the complete data analysis.

Key Takeaways

Our Mission

Data journalism is a powerful force in the ever-evolving media landscape, pushing the boundaries of storytelling and captivating audiences when attention is the currency defining success. But it's not just about flashy visuals— data journalism tackles some of today’s hardest and most important journalistic tasks: fact-checking and evidence-gathering.

The State of Data Journalism Survey exists to keep track of the latest developments in this exciting and fast-moving field and shed light on where the profession is heading - and where it faces hurdles - to evolve and flourish.

In 2021 and 2022, we rolled out in-depth data journalism surveys. What did our findings show? Significant and consistent gender imbalances and data quality issues vary depending on location. Those elite dedicated data teams? Scarce, especially outside the legacy media giants. Oh, and the pandemic? It played a role in bringing a third of our respondents into the data journalism world.

At its core, data journalism is about blending data, tools, and visuals to craft impactful stories. But here's the real challenge—data journalists must have strong reporting skills combined with the ability to work with stats, design visuals and even wield a bit of code in certain programming languages. Our surveys revealed a thirst for levelling up these skills.

With the 2023 survey, we seek to continue our tradition of understanding and explaining the data journalism profession to our global audience. This year we are introducing two new sets of survey questions about Open-Source Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence.

This study reflects Datajournalism.com and EJC’s commitment to continuously support the data journalism community. Join us in our mission to monitor and map the state of data journalism today.

Methodology

The State of Data Journalism 2023 Survey comprised a total of 76 questions and had 776 respondents, of which 768 were used for the analysis. The survey was organised into seven sections: demographics, industry structure, skills and tools, work practices, challenges and opportunities, and the usage of OSINT and AI. It was available in three languages: English, Italian, and Spanish.

1. Population of interest and sampling strategy

The population of interest was the global community of individuals involved in data journalism. Targeted respondents included full-time and part-time employed data journalists, freelancers, data editors and team leads, trainers, faculty members, educators, and students. In the absence of a directory of people who are part of the data journalism industry in 2023, we discarded the possibility of drawing a random or representative sample. Instead, we followed the approach of trying to reach respondents as widely as possible through a variety of channels.

2. Outreach strategy and incentives

The survey was open between December 7th, 2023 and January 16th, 2024. Participation was encouraged through various communications channels to minimise bias obtained by targeting solely one online community. We used direct mailing, social media promotion and asked the DataJournalism.com and European Journalism Centre communities to help spread the word.

3. Survey logic

Questions targeting a specific subgroup were only shown to those respondents to minimise survey length while maximising survey inclusion. Still, questions about journalistic practices were left open to all (this was done to reflect that students, educators, and editors might be involved in producing and publishing journalistic data work from time to time). Most survey questions were optional.

4. Data Cleaning

For the analysis, only complete questionnaires were retained. We included all questionnaires where respondents had filled in all of our mandatory questions. However, we obtained near to full responses throughout the entire questionnaire (the median response rate was 99%). We found eight duplicate names and email addresses. We randomly selected which questionnaire to keep for each of these duplicates.

5. Metadata

The reported statistics have a 95% confidence level and a margin of error of ±4 percentage points.

With the survey in its third edition, we asked participants whether they had previously participated in the survey: 13% of respondents took the survey in 2021, and 22% took the survey in 2022. Of these, 7% have taken both previous editions of the survey.

85% of respondents took the survey in English, 8% in Spanish, and 7% in Italian. 58% of respondents found the survey length good, while 32% found it a bit long, which is an overall improvement from the 2021 and 2022 editions (41% and 37%, respectively). We appreciate the feedback, and we will continue to improve our questionnaire.

Thank you

A warm thank you to all of the people involved in data journalism who took the time to participate in our survey. A heartfelt thank you to all those who helped us craft and polish our survey before launch. 

Without the support of other organisations, the European Journalism Centre would not be able to support the data journalism community. We welcome conversations with those who appreciate our work and wish to support initiatives such as this report.

And to the supporters of Datajournalism.com, for offering tools, goodies, and insights: