Give me your location and I’ll turn it into a story

Geodata driven and infographic supported items are the result. GEOS, the Geomatics MSc student association at TU Delft invited journalist, lecturer and writer Piet Kaashoek from Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Tilburg to speak about how location and data inform the making of a contemporary news story.

Before an audience of around 20 geomatics master students Kaashoek briefly reviewed the ten defining elements of journalism that still apply despite the data driven shifts. He said that journalism centres on facts, loyalty to citizens, independence, monitoring power and stimulating debate. But it also involves accuracy, newsworthiness, personal conscience, proportionality and responsibility.

He then outlined the six questions a journalist uses to structure a news item: the five Ws – who, what, where, why and when, and the H – how. Where previously the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ were often leading, now some journalists focus on the ‘where’ as their starting point for a story idea. They have become more proactive searching data to uncover patterns. They think about what it can reveal, to raise unsuspected issues of interest to the public.

He illustrated the approach by explaining how his journalism students linked spatial information on Dutch municipalities to data on the number of unemployed to generate maps. This revealed a maximum in the east of the Netherlands which generated further questions as to why this was so. Another example presented the distribution of refugees per country in Europe, showing that Germany had the most but several other countries, such as Hungary, that had none. Maps of the locations of Twitter feeds on the day flight MH17 was shot down displayed peaks centred around government in The Hague, the media in Hilversum and surprisingly also Dutch holidaymakers on the Spanish Mediterranean coast.

“This linking of data sets based on location are just the starting point,” said Kaashoek. They do not tell the whole story and can be coincidental or plain false. “The journalist still has to address other questions raised, check more facts in the field and follow up by verifying and interviewing.”